Democratic change in France usually needs a little help from the street -it has been an unwritten pillar of every Republic, bringing stability and voice as much as instability. So when the urban homeless brought their homes – in the form of tents – to the streets, they follow a long political process of integration. > Will the rushed “right to a roof”, fueled by presidential hopes, be more than symbolic? The powerful homelessness films by Agnes Varda -Sans Toit ni Loi and Les Glaineurs – remind us how fast a marginal life can sink.
Descending to the streets is part of the typical HOWTO of deliberative democracy, nor is it clear how exactly the Wisdom of the Crowd shines through in this process. But maybe there is nevertheless a “hidden secret” of the French constitution at work: there is nothing like action to show you really mean what you say.
The problems of urbanisation more generally are highlighted by The Worldwatch Institute’s Vital Signs report. More than half the world’s population is urban, and the number is growing. Point to a social problem – climate change, people-flow, identity, poverty, homelessness – and it is bound to also be an urban problem.
Even, it seems, the very rural issue of organic farming. David Milliband criticised the health claims made by Organic farmers. Lobby capture? Or is there a valid trade-off to be seen between agricultural productivity and other pressing issues – urban poverty, of course, but less intuitively also climate change, with the claim that Organic food tends to spend more carbon getting to us than logistically optimised supermarket food? We won’t expect Fast Food to translate to “green food” in the film of Schlosser’s book, soon to be released in the UK.
The trials of urbanisation are evident also in Rio’s riots: another sign of the Brazilian state’s challenge to meet its basic Hobbesian compact of preserving order, as Arthur Ituassu has noted in a string of articles for us.
by Tony Curzon Price.
