Anyone for a quiet riot?

I have no interest in rioting - apart from anything else, these days I would not fancy my chances running from gendarmes who are 30 years younger. But what does interest me is the humorous & non-violent repossession of public space, such as shopping centres. On the other hand, the growing trend for deadly dull, corporatist use of ‘art’ and ‘street theatre’ to somehow ‘humanise’ commercial places (and more particularly to control our use of them and movement around them) is a distraction – or just bad taste – and we could all do without it.

We all need to be more aware of the extent to which urban planners try to make sure we use what was once genuinely public space in an economically ‘efficient’ way. That is, their only aim is to deliver the biggest possible profits to retailers in the shortest possible time.

Once you dismiss tiresome (and hypocritical) middle class nose-pulling at such blatant commercialism, this, in itself, might not be so objectionable. If the real target was a ‘customer-centred-experience’, what could be the objection to professionals, for once, actually giving us what we want, not what some marketing air-head thinks is this year’s fashion?

But of course, the real problem is that what the (paying) customer wants was never the target. And where it gets murkier is when urban planning, in practice, begins to consider how to exclude ‘undesirables’, zoning in instead on the use of the smallest space for shortest time by the most economically active.

For example, some years ago an architectural student on work experience I knew was startled to discover how much thinking goes into making seats in indoor shopping centres too uncomfortable to sit on for more than, say, a 10 minute breather between shops. More recently I was equally surprised when an ‘insider’ revealed to me just how much work the Douglas redevelopers have done – for example around Strand Street – to ensure benches and shop doorways cannot become improvised overnight facilities for the homeless.

Then there is the care taken in developing lines of sight within indoor plazas. In my architectural student friend’s case (and incidentally, this was well before the current terrorist-obsessed CCTV era)  he discovered all about this while sitting quietly one day on a bench in a shopping centre. Rather ironically, he was there to study it for a class project.

He was astonished when a security guard approached and informed him that, as he had been observed sitting on the same bench for 20 minutes, previous to which for some 35 he had been observed moving around the shopping centre but not entering any shop, using any eating facility or purchasing anything in general, the management was evicting him. When he objected that he was sitting in a public place, doing no harm, and had a right to be there, he was informed that actually it was a private place, that he had no right to be there if he wasn’t purchasing goods or services, and that all round it might be better for his health if he left of his own volition, rather than being assisted to fly face first onto the pavement outside. The security goon was not quite that eloquent, but that was his general argument.

For my friend, along with others to whom he related this experience, this was quite enlightening, and the start of our attempts to establish if this was a ‘one off’ or a common feature of late 20^th century civil society, and if the latter what might be done about it.

One thing that quickly struck us was that multi-store complexes, shopping centres and so on are typically built on former public gathering places (e.g. town markets and other crossing places between communities), typically at huge public expenditure and by public bodies supposedly subject to the democratic process who hand over public land to private developers, often for free or at a token price, with the excuse that the town must develop economically or die.

It is also the case that in order for this to happen, troublesome small shopkeepers and private householders find themselves evicted by compulsory purchase orders. In past decades the excuse would simply be that they lowered the tone of the area (i.e. appeals to class prejudice), but one new variant on this is to play on cod-environmental concerns. Incidentally, we could also list the increasingly use by employers and government agencies of ’health and safety’ concerns to take away, rather than protect, the rights of workers and state housing tenants.

In effect then, for the good of the community the community is destroyed and its assets passed to fly-by-night developers and multinational shop chains, who move on to the next complex as soon as the rent or tax holiday ends and they are expected to pay their way like ordinary citizens.

But take away our playing fields, market places and parks, and what do we have left? What was the point of several centuries in which our ancestors moved from the country to the towns, the fields to the factories (and we more recently to offices and first-time buyer developments) if all of the rewards and compensations wrung from reluctant governments and employers are just taken away again? The other question is; 'What might we do about it?'

My suggestion is to take them back from time to time – even if only for an hour or two - but to have fun doing it. Just use them, but use them the way we want to use them, and not to the benefit of those who stole them from us.

One of the funniest examples I know of concerned elderly people in an Australian city, whose council shut the community centre where they used to meet and handed the land over to a developer for a shopping centre. These pensioners decided that as it was ‘their’ meeting place anyway, not another hangout for the rich and unspeakable, they would just continue meeting there. Which they did, by the hundred, with wheelchairs, Zimmer frames and all the rest of the paraphernalia of old age, bringing the entire place to a standstill day after day until the council and the developers caved in and offered an alternative meeting place.

In about 1997 this example directly inspired a Manchester anti-consumerist group’s campaign to celebrate Buy Nothing Day (look it up at http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/ , then act on it). ‘Workmen’ dragged sofas, comfy chairs and other household items into one of that city’s dullest shopping centres. ‘Coincidentally’ a number of ‘customers’ then started to use them to……well, to do little or nothing. As enraged security guards managed to clear one ‘obstruction’, more furniture was ‘delivered’ to another area, or another level, or another shopping centre, and so it went on all day around the city. Far from being annoyed, many people who came there merely to consume had a great day out too. They saw the joke and joined in, then went home, told others and in turn caused more people to see the joke, and caused more discussions. 

And did retail workers – people having little choice in the late 20^th century other than to take whatever ‘Mcjob’ is going – get annoyed? I think not. How else did the group know exactly where to bring in all that furniture, where to put it, and precisely when?

For another elegant variation on the theme, see, for example, http://thechap.net/cms/2012/04/the-siege-of-savile-row/ or the earlier attempts by ‘The Chaps’ to ‘Civilise the City’ or poke imaginative fun at the decidedly unmaginative modern art that wins major prizes and gets sold to the dull entrepreneurs who run drab corporations.

Think of such disruptions of the modern nightmare as quiet rioting, gentle striking, or any other play on such terms you want to invent. In a world from which an uncivilised minority is intent on disenfranchising us, sometimes just doing nothing – creatively rather than because you are meant to – can be the best response. And anyway, everybody (even consumers) needs the odd day off to do something interesting instead.