The Argument Against Democracy
March 28, 2008
by HB
Sometimes, just maybe, you get the right person with the right ideas in the right position of power. Then, he can go about doing good without the need to pander. As a preview, Jaime Lerner, the mayor of a medium-sized city in Brazil in the 1970s, built a city that's everything the first world now realizes it wishes it had built over the last 40 years.
In 1971, aged just 33, Lerner was "appointed" mayor by the military regime that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985. The Lerner revolution, which would later be replicated in cities from Colombia and Cuba to Russia, began.
"The city of Curitiba became a reference for doing exactly the opposite of what other cities were doing," he says. "Other cities were building big bridges and freeways, and we were making pedestrian streets. Many cities were building metro systems, and we started our own transport system."
Key to the transformation was stealth, Lerner believes. "I said: 'We have to do things quickly because next week we might not be here anymore [because of the dictatorship].' And you have to be quick to avoid your own bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything." Over the following 20 years, a period during which Curitiba underwent drastic, rapid changes, Lerner was mayor three times. "We built the opera house in two months, the botanical gardens in three months, Niemeyer's museum in five months. We transformed the city's main street into a pedestrian area in 72 hours. It wasn't that we were chasing after records - it was necessity."
Do read the articles. As with any real-world example, it doesn't map truly onto an argument for or against a particular kind of government. Curitiba's success could easily have been quashed by the dictatorship, and it has continued to succeed under the succeeding regime. (And do let us ignore for these purposes whatever no-doubt horrible things the dictatorship did.) But having that fear of government can overcome even the most ornery of men (the bureaucrat) in a way that the diffuse, indirectly-expressed will of the people just doesn't inspire. That fear, when used by the right hands, can be put to much good use. Of course, you need someone who understands this: "Taking care of a city is a process that you start, and then give the population space to respond."
There's an argument in the Times article that the lowering rates of recycling are due to the authoritarian origins of the city's environmentalism. It goes unrebutted, but I'm not sure what to make of it. "'They didn’t have to confront the public through public participation, and the decisions could be made by urban planners — architects acting as politicians,' says Clara Irazábal..." But I'm not sure how a democracy would do that job better. Do we recycle because we vote? Or are the civic virtues separable enough from the particular political structures so that if your mayor does the right things, which are acknowledged as being right by the people, through autocratic means, you participate even though your opinion wasn't polled? I think that phenomenon's been going on for a really long time. It's also hard not to want to argue a causal relationship between later growth in size, wealth, and political freedom and a decrease in civic participation (and indeed, several succeeding mayors have distanced themselves from Lerner because of his ties to the dictatorship, even as they've distanced themselves from the recycling program). But, of course, I know nothing about the facts of this city beyond what's in these articles.
I particularly enjoyed this paragraph as an illustration of good law-making, grounded in blunt practicality: Lerner also believes that urban planning can be a key weapon against global warming and climate change. "As I'm a descendent of Jews, I have some commandments that we need to follow," he says. "First commandment: use your car less. Second commandment: separate your rubbish. Third: live near to your work, or work near your home. It needs to be about life, work and movement being all together." It's sort of like a new Leviticus, at least those portions dealing with mold (look them up!).
I suppose I should give bloggy credit to this guy for pointing me in this direction.
Comments
On March 28 at 7'05 AM
, Richard Layman wrote:
The counter argument would be (1) Portland, which is the point made in the quoted book by Irazabla, or (2) the efforts of Enrique Penalosa in Bogota, or (3) the various efforts of Bernard Delanoe in Paris, etc.
But I will say that in the U.S. generally there aren’t that many great mayors, and we have a very weak culture of civic engagement, which ultimately and fundamentally is the real problem.
Joseph Riley of Charleston is a great mayor.