analySen SuStainability JuSt Mobility Postfossil conversion and free PuBlic transPort Michael Brie and Mario candeias Translated from the German by Alexander Gallas 1 Just Mobility Postfossil Conversion and free PubliC transPort By Michael Brie and Mario Candeias Institute for Critical Social Analysis Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Germany Prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association on «Concrete Utopias. Emancipatory Projects, Institutional Designs, Possible Futures» Denver, August 17–20, 2012 2 Part i. Part ii. Private E-Car vs. Public Transport Conversion. for free – Real Dystopia vs. Concrete Towards a Eco-Socialist Economy Utopia of Reproduction Michael Brie Mario Candeias Crises create opportunities to set long- How to get from here to there? A Free range goals for the future. A key ques- Public Transport system is deeply con- tion is that of urban mobility in a world nected to the conversion of the car in- in which the great majority of the world’s dustry and specific modes of dealing population will soon live in cities of over a with contradictions of a transformati- million inhabitants, many of them in me- ve process. The car industry is facing tropolitan conurbations. Broadly spea- strong challenges between crisis of king, there are two possible alternatives: overproduction, booming demand from one, the US system of mobility centred «emerging markets’, spatial relocation on private, petrol-driven cars can be and ecological necessities. Conversion ecologically modernized and expanded and a just transition for the workers and to embrace the globe by switching to communities affected face several stra- electric-powered cars; or, two, public tegic dilemma. The paper elaborates on transport can be ecologized and made union and (eco)movement strategies more flexible. For historical reasons the and short comings, trying to draw on factors determining which of these alter- a political method and projects, which natives will be chosen are very different create communalities out of different and path-dependent. Whereas rapid interests at the same time as appre- transit systems have largely disappeared ciating differences. The protagonist of from many US metropolises, European such a process of transformation to- metropolises are characterized by mixed wards a Green Socialism can only be systems. In many metropolises of the a «mosaic left» oriented towards parti- southern hemisphere the car-based cipation, which enables people to be- mobility of the rising middle classes co- come «the drivers of their own history» exists with the exclusion of large sec- (Eric Mann 2001) tions of the city-dwelling poor from urban mobility. Long-term experi ments with a free-of-charge public transport system could act as a global model. Private e-Car vs. PubliC transPort for free – 3 real DystoPia vs. ConCrete utoPia Michael Brie Forwards into the past As the official handout to the World Ex- On April 30, 1939, a very hot Sunday hibition – organized by a private compa- that was also the 150th anniversary of ny – put it: «The eyes of the Fair are on the inauguration of George Washington the future — not in the sense of peering as first president of the USA, the New toward the unknown nor attempting York World Exhibition opened its doors to foretell the events of tomorrow and in the presence of over 200,000 people. the shape of things to come, but in the Among the speakers were Franklin D. sense of presenting a new and clearer Roosevelt and Albert Einstein. In 1939 view of today in preparation for tomor- and 1940 this exhibition was visited by row; a view of the forces and ideas that 44 million people. The Great Crash of prevail as well as the machines. To its vi- 1929 that had brought the USA and Eu- sitors the Fair will say: ‹Here are the ma- rope to the brink of economic and soci- terials, ideas, and forces at work in our al collapse was still not quite overcome. world. These are the tools with which The New Deal on the one hand, and an the World of Tomorrow must be made. arms build-up and war preparations They are all interesting and much effort on the other, had ushered in structural has been expended to lay them before changes whose consequences were not you in an interesting way. Familiarity yet discernible. The Soviet Union was with today is the best preparation for the represented as were Czechoslovakia, future.›»2 Poland and Belgium, which were soon to Two places in particular drew crowds at be overrun by Germany. China, fighting the World Exhibition – the Tr ylon and Pe- for survival against a Japanese invasion, risphere and Futurama. However much was unable to take part. Germany did they might have in common in matters not take part in the World Exhibition, de- of detail, they can be regarded as oppo- nouncing it in abusive terms as an «Exhi- sing blueprints of the future. bition of Filthy Talmud Jews» (Völkischer The Trylon and Perisphere formed Beobachter)1. The Second World War the official, architectural centre of the and the shadow of Auschwitz loomed World Exhibition. They were intended on the horizon. While German panzer co- to embody the great vision of the next lumns were advancing on Warsaw and hundred years and foreshadow a new German bombs raining down on Polish global civilization – the Democracity of cities, while Paris was being occupied the year 2039. The over 212 metres tall and the Battle of Britain was raging, visi- Trylon and the spherical Periphere (over tors to the World Exhibition were looking 65 metres in diameter) were designed at «The World of Tomorrow». by the architects Wallace Harrison and This World Exhibition had been chiefly 1 Detlef Borchers: Vor 70 Jahren: Die Welt von morgen war initiated by large private corporations in auch einmal besser (30.4.2009) (http://www.heise.de/ct/ar- the USA bent on presenting themselves tikel/Vor-70-Jahren-Die-Welt-von-morgen-war-auch-ein­­- mal-besser-301540.html, 8.1.2012). 2 http://en.wikipedia. as visionaries and pioneers of progress. org/wiki/1939_New_York_World%27s_Fair (8.1.2012). 4 making and recreation, industry and agriculture, were organically linked in mutual dependence; from which slums and crime had been banished; where sunshine and clean air were accessible to every man and woman; and which was fuelled by renewable energy in the shape of water power. It was «a brave new world built by united hands and hearts»,3 into which the workers of «office, farm and factory» came and intoned a song by William Grant Still «Rising Tide»: «Hand in hand, side by si- de…». In the centre of this new life form was the place of joint decision-making for a life together in freedom. While Trylon and Perisphere incorpora- ted a vision of the future derived from open discussion, Futurama was nothing more nor less than a corporate blueprint Trylon, Perisphere and Helicline of the coming society. It was the pavilion photo by Sam Gottscho of General Motors, having a surface area (free commons from Wikipedia: This image of over 3,300 square metres with half is available from the United States Library of a million (!) houses, a million trees, and Congress’s Prints and Photographs division 50,000 miniature vehicles.4 The whole under the digital ID gsc.5 a02965) was conceived by the industrial desig- ner Norman Bel Geddes. The time hori- J. Andre Fouilhoux, while the interior of zon which General Motors had in mind the sphere, the Periphere, was the work was not a hundred, but only twenty ye- of Henry Dreyfuss, whose Democracity ars. Its future was «the wonder world drew upon Le Corbusier’s design of a of 1960», which the blurb described as ville radieuse (radiant city). The visitors «the greater and better world of tomor- ascended twenty metres on what was row …», a «tribute to the American sche- then the world’s longest escalator into me of living where by individual effort, the interior of the Periphere, and looked the freedom to think and the will to do down at the world of the future moun- are giving birth to a generation of men ted on revolving balconies, while one of who always want new fields for greater the most famous radio announcers of accomplishment». Flying over the USA the day, Hans von Kaltenborn, spoke the of the year 1960 in 552 mobile seats, commentary. He described a civilizati- on which lived in harmony with nature; 3 Ibid. An impression may be obtained from the video, which contains the commentary and the song: http://www.you - in which individuals and nations lived tube.com/watch?v=pd-6sWzLiFA (8.1.2012). 4 Details taken in peace with one another; in which li- from: http://www.expo2000.de/expo2000/geschichte/detail. php?wa_id=14&lang=2&s_typ=8; http://en.wikipedia.org/wi- ving and working, democratic decision- ki/1939_New_York_World%27s_Fair (8.1.2012). seeing a land criss-crossed by mighty private car and long-distance freight 5 motorways constituting the arteries of transport.7 Perhaps the time has come the nation, swooping down into a city in to rediscover the vision of Democracity which residential, service, administrati- rather than the crisis-racked world of Fu- ve and industrial areas are separate («all turama as the year 2039 draws nearer! have been separated for greater effici- ency and greater convenience») and the Back to the Future city centre is dominated by 400-metre In the context of the cultural changes skyscrapers that helicopters can land of this period the oil crisis of the early on. It is a world built «in the spirit of in- 1970s triggered a new debate on mo- dividual enterprise in the Great Ameri- bility.