Cities for Citizens: Friedman, ed.

Friedman, John and Mike Douglas, eds. Cities for Citizens. John Wiley and Sons, Ltd: Sussex, England, 1998.

-Chapter 2: "Planning and Civil Society in the Twenty-first Century: An Introduction" (Friedman)
-Portions from "Empowering Civil Society: Habernas, Foucault and the Question of Conflict." (Bent Flybjerg)
-Chapter 12: "Civil/Uncivil Society: Confusing Form with Content" (Janet Abu-Lughod)

Summary:
Friedman's introduction includes a definition of civil society as well as a broad overview of the chapters that follow. His arguments mostly focus on the idea of the individual and organization's power, rights, and responsibilities as the 'citizen.' He argues that the elite have no connection or allegiance while the "disempowered great majority of the world's population value local traditions and inhabit specific places, but thier voices have been rendered silent." "Civil society is that part of social life which lies beyond the immediate reach of the state, and which, we would argue, must exist for a democratic state to flower." (P2) The citizen is part of a political struggle to maintain or strengthen their rights to demand that the state work for the people, especially those without power (P3)

The planner's jobs, Friedman argues, is to avoid the ruckus of politics in order to "discover and give voice to the broad interests of people in a long-term future perspective." (P19) Organizations, like the NGO, were developed to address the social needs that the city was not able to, but "their collective efforts inevitably fall far short of the probelms with whose symptoms they engage." As they proliferate, however, the NGO beginst to step on one another's toes and are forced to fight amongst their increasing numbers for non-increasing funding sources.

Maybe good for a beginning or ending quote: "The market economy doesn't solve urban problems; it creates them. Its patheticaly narrow vision for the future comes down to one syllable, 'more.' More is better than less. Growth is mandatory. Consumption is a civil obligation. But in fact, the materialism of the consumer society has very little to do with the good life, which is rather about the quality of human relationships" (P20).

Friedman also talks briefly about how poverty is defined, again offering no solutions. He says that concept of the household as a consumer leads to poverty being thought of as a problem of low-income. In turn, this leads anti-poverty movements to frame their raise this income as a way of increasing their spending power. Friedman argues that poverty is also a result of low access to necessary resources for household production which he calls the "bases of social power and include a secure lifespace, surplus time over and above time required for the reproduction of life, social networks, knoweldge and skills..., social organizations, good health, instruments and tools of domestic production, and ... financial resources" (P24).

His concern for poverty doesn't remove his belief that civil societies are in the business for themselves. The most incredible thing that I found within the reading was the unexpected remark that "within the constraints of structural imperatives, it is in its attention to small that the quality of our lives are found." He gives a few examples such as communities forcing cities to care for how the streets look or marking commemorative sites (P28).

Finally, Freidman steps back to look at some characteristics of successful planners within civil societies. He says that "reciprocity and trust counts for a good deal more than one's salary... [and] although shared experiences serves as an important foundation for trust, it is only the first and not neccessarily the most important basis. Trust develops in the course of working together..." Planners must withhold from judgment in order to understand points of view with which they are unfamiliar. Social transformation, however, is possible through the "enlargement of space for the workings of the moral economy based on relations of trust, reciprocity, and dialogue, ... and second, to make its multiple voices heard and respected through active participation in decisions that affect its conditions of life and wellbeing..." (P32-33). For delf-development to occur, someone needs to remove the obstacles to inclusion, opportunity, and "a form of social justice that acknowledges the different priorities and needs of different groups" (P34).

Abu-Lughod challenges Friedman's advocacy for supporting civil society as good planning practice. She first questions Friedman's usage of the term - "almost as a synonym for decentralization and local empowerment exercised through associational (and oftentimes voluntary) organizations," and points out that even these organizations are not neutral and can even be evil (P232). Her argument is that civil society needs to operate within certain confines of enough, too much, and too little (P236) as well as to point out that civil societies will have little change unless they change the current dominant political systems. She quotes Friedman, "reintegrating ... an existing political community in which [the people] exercise their rights, cannot be done in any meaningful sense unless the systems-in-dominance - authoritarianism, peripheral capitalism, and patriarchy - are themselves changed in fundamental ways." She then goes on to say that the planners job is not to listen and give the people what they want but to create and change the ways in which the people can GET what they want (P237).

To wrap up this intense round of quotes and reading, let's end on Flybjerg's idea that "'validity' is established via the mode of communication rather than through rational arguments concerning the matter at hand" (P194).


Reflections:
Although this book was meant for planners, it was good to get a broad overview of "civil society" and its present place in society. Friedman is a bit of an idealist with his notion that civil society is the opposition to unjust political structures and wealth but has been proven right many times in the cases when social movements (anti-slavery or feminists) has been a successful organization by the people, for the people. Although it advocates autonomy as the answer, again there are no concrete examples given of how "autonomy" may be achieved. Friedman presents a contradiction in the first part of his chapter that involves the idea that civil society is bound for failure while planning has the chance for change while the problem truly lies in the fabric of the concept of development. Overall, his general ideas are useful for supporting PV's place in social change as a way of creating those spaces necessary for representing many voices.

I found it interesting to read the respond of Abu-Lughod to Friedman's essay because it offered points that I hadn't considered. Finally, while Flybjerg's essay was mostly unhelpful, portions of it resonated so I quoted it.