The past becomes your future, the future as policy.........
I have said it before I will say it again. Whilst I pinched the past becomes your future concept from a Complexity Theory concept called “future backwards, and have used the expression many times, I have never seen the term used in a public policy sense. But quite recently I saw words of a similar nature in a Liverpool City Council policy document related to heritage and culture. I can't recall the documents name – there have been so many - but I wonder where they got the concept from?
The relationship in this sense is harmless, but in a broad strategic sense the idea that by analysing the past you can own the future is an odd one. Worse still is documenting it as a plan. But this is what large organisations do. Freed from the restraints of normality they make distant plans without agreement and without certainty.
Anyway I have recently enjoyed meeting an eminent political philosopher with an interest in theology. I confess no religious belief myself, but I do have a deep respect for people who do. I also have a broad interest in religious ideology and have been attracted to literature and media on these subjects for most of my adult life. But as ever I remain a committed dilettante; probably best too
So with theological thoughts in my head, and futurism in my heart, I am reminded of a talk I heard Bishop James give in the Anglican Cathedral a few years ago. He was on the "top-table" with the great and good of the Liverpool regeneration world, at an event where regeneration policy in the city was being preached. I, on the other hand, was with my six-year old daughter Sophie sitting in the lowly front pews.
Earlier on, Sophie and I had been sitting elsewhere; namely the cathedral floor where we had been picnicking along with others in the cathedral! And very nice this was too. The contrast of a lowly floor and a top table sounds like the introduction to a metaphor but it isn't. And nor is it a criticism of the Bishop, who I recall had also been sharing the picnic. In my opinion Bishop James is a people person and not a "top table" man. He is an intellectual carpenter, not unlike the man he follows, and comfortable with intricate joinery, carving, and cutting that the building and construction on an idea involves.
I must comment too, that the sharing of food in a religious sense is deeply symbolic and forms a key part of the Bible story and of the Eucharist. It is also a key aspect of what it means to be human. So to share food with strangers in a non-religious way, yet do so in a Cathedral, is a lovely humanist idea. People should do more eating and less fighting, and if there is a need to fight, then let it be a fight for social justice that includes feeding the poor
As I recount these events, nothing that follows is meant to be a parable or religiously symbolic. If anyone thinks there are religious parables, then it was not intended. The story I report is that of the facts and reactions only.
I am sure that this occasion remains the only time that I have ever eaten food in a cathedral, or indeed a church, but I can confess to dancing in the Lady Chapel of the Anglican Cathedral, with my good friend Tommy Calderbank. We were there as part of celebration for an event called “Your Big Year, but this is another story for another day.
Anyway the Bishop made a point in his talk about comparing regeneration to a fire, stating the need to light a fire and to feed it with material to make it big and strong. I see the logic, the oneness, the collectiveness, the communalism, and so on, but I felt the metaphor was wrong. After the talking was over and those on the top table had had their say, I could not get the microphone quickly enough.
I like the Bishop a great deal and wanted to make my point with respect and humility. So I asked him to consider whether what he had said was wrong. I then suggested that what he should have said was that the regeneration industries should not be lighting big fires at all. Their job was to prepare the kindling and materials necessary to take flames from the big fire, to light hundred of fires all over the city, thus enabling people to bring life to all sorts of ideas.
This passed the collected top table suits by, but as soon as the event was over the Bishop made straight for Sophie and I. I believe he was quite taken by an idea that was, in a way, a parable. Perhaps it is.....
I believe in people more than I do policy. The word policy derives from the Greek word "Polis" meaning of the city, but a further definition relates the the word to enforcement and policing. In my opinion the world of urban regeneration has too much policing and "kettling". Whilst the Bishop and I did not talk of civic policy we have since struck up a communication, of sorts, on a range of ideas and concepts. This is something I find very flattering. I should write more on this and call it "The Bishop and the Dilettante!"
An additional point I made to the Bishop was that the UK's mainstream churches with their broad pastoral scope, breadth of congregational skills, and physical presence in every ward and constituency in the UK, are far better placed to inspire regeneration concepts than any local authority or regeneration quango. They might also participate in a way that a council can not. Councils tend to reflect centralist ideas in the intellectual sense of governance and physical sense of being located "down town" in a civic citadel; namely the town hall. Yes, many of the inhabitants of the town hall are elected representatives with broader views than this, but they can be difficult to approach and the bureaucracy of local government can be appalling. In my opinion local councillors, and their officials, really do need to get out more, and not just to be seen, but to be heard!
OK our mainstream church hierarchies are struggling too. But as stated to the Bishop, if it was possible to take the religion from the fire and allow pastoral skills to be the keeper of the fire, you have a very meaningful and localised form of civic democracy. And in most cases I'd much prefer pastoral dogma to civic dogma.
For all of my own opinions on civic led regeneration I fear that the reality of its ideology is increasingly grounded in imposing more introspective, top table, waiter service, look down, menu approach to ideas, people, and place, and not less. Top table thinking has clear dominance over floor level picnicking, and big fires make more smoke than assorted small fires. People like big fires, and it might also be suggested that they create more smoke to hide in. And it is for these types of reasons that I believed the opinions I shared with Bishop James were well-founded and reasonable. In fact I would have liked him to have commissioned me to have done some work along these lines. I've written elsewhere on the gospels of regeneration and would have liked to have explored such ideas with people in the church and in the regeneration industry at large
The Bishop has his own theory about community regeneration called "Urban Diabetes". Just like the disease it's about blood being cut off from the extremities that need it most. He is right. Regeneration in Liverpool has certainly been targeted at the city centre core in a theoretical "trickle-down" ideology. Trickle-down theory, by the way, grew from Reaganomics, and whilst it was a specific idea related to tax-breaks, the theory was that if the wealthy paid less tax, the broad befits would spread to societies less fortunate. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...... From a regenerative perspective, it was assumed that the application of vast amounts of public money into a concentrated are would have a similar effect. Maybe it will, but it is taking time to see the evidence and proof.
In Liverpool there is no doubt that many in the the city's professional services sector have done well. The list includes lawyers, property developers, architects, financiers, cultural bodies, hoteliers, retailers, city centre residents, shoppers, visitors and so on. In addition the Public Sector bodies, quango's and consultants, who support the model and hold the purse strings, have also done well. And I am not knocking this. But beyond the city core, the city still has areas of marginal to zero economic activity, and obvious signs of peripheral disadvantage. In fact you can see this clearly from the map drawn boundary lines that define the city centre. Step across the red line and the difference is marked. The core is surrounded by a ring of decay that some economist call "the doughnut effect
But much worse than a doughnut is the ZOO. In some "under-trickled" places attempts have been made to create opportunity using ZOO's. That's right ZOO's. Not one for animals, but ones housing people. Some poor urban areas of Liverpool were actually labelled as ZOO's as an acronym for "Zones of Opportunity". But how insensitive must it be to be a Liverpudlian living in an under privileged, or under provided for area, that a bland civic official has labelled a ZOO. Would you like your place, where you grew up, to be called a Zoo? Would they? I doubt it.
The Bishop's use of Urban Diabetes is a different metaphor to mine, but means a similar thing. So if I align my thinking to his thinking about medical prescription, and forget using fires as a way to conceptualise regeneration, then in my medical opinion the gout of urban excess and entropy of urban decay are topics well worth returning to as prescriptive matters of some urgency. But I shall save the patient for another day.
Thursday, 12 December 2013
Wednesday, 4 December 2013
Lipstick Environmentalism
I see the government is putting more lipstick on its environmental policies by updating its thinking on renewable subsidies.
It has been announced that the government is to cut support for onshore wind and solar energy projects, but give more support to offshore wind power.
Why does the government hate micro power generation so much, when small can be good? And what is in it for them in supporting more & more offshore wind farms, when the technology benefits are dubious and the facilitators are mainly non-domicile companies?
So let's consider a cake? How do you make a cake? Well the easy way is to get all the ingredients and make the cake in one go. This is how most people do it. It's how government does big projects. It's efficient; it’s convenient.
But another way is to collect crumbs, thousands of them, and combine these into a cake. OK it’s messy and not so efficient at the start, but is not as daft as it sounds as this is how many financial institutions make money from establishing vast numbers of trades adopting very small margins.
Collective power can work in a similar way. Thousand of people doing the same thing with a common purpose, makes sense. It's cheap and effective and over time, very efficient
Meanwhile the government merely puckers its lips keeps applying lipstick.
It has been announced that the government is to cut support for onshore wind and solar energy projects, but give more support to offshore wind power.
Why does the government hate micro power generation so much, when small can be good? And what is in it for them in supporting more & more offshore wind farms, when the technology benefits are dubious and the facilitators are mainly non-domicile companies?
So let's consider a cake? How do you make a cake? Well the easy way is to get all the ingredients and make the cake in one go. This is how most people do it. It's how government does big projects. It's efficient; it’s convenient.
But another way is to collect crumbs, thousands of them, and combine these into a cake. OK it’s messy and not so efficient at the start, but is not as daft as it sounds as this is how many financial institutions make money from establishing vast numbers of trades adopting very small margins.
Collective power can work in a similar way. Thousand of people doing the same thing with a common purpose, makes sense. It's cheap and effective and over time, very efficient
Meanwhile the government merely puckers its lips keeps applying lipstick.
Liverpool Flyovers - OR - How the past can become you future
One of the perpetual themes I have been conscious of in my attempts to establish and set up Made in Liverpool Ltd, as a vehicle to promote local talent and ideas, is that of how the past can become your future. It happens in a number of ways. In fact Made in Liverpool uses this concept as a strap line to some of its strategic thinking
Here's how you might see an example of this in everyday life......
As at 2013 I often see young people using “retro” sports bags, which were pure naff to friends and I, when we were young, and at the time when such products were first introduced. OK these were something new when compared to the old school satchel (which have become equally fashionable today)but many of us in those days were quite happy to use a plastic bags. Interestingly the use of plastic bags today is definitely not fashionable, given a range of environmental concerns. Yet here are retro 1970's sports brand bags "on the street" all over again. At school we would deface them with marker pens, especially other peoples, albeit many kids were equally keen to deface their own! Some with very amusing results as in those days none of us could spell. I recall a friends white Adidas bag with Led Zeppelin written all over it. This was written at least six times, but each one was spelled differently, and each one spelled wrong!
I also see a resurgence of Northern Soul, (catch the Paul Mason Culture Show documentary on You Tube) a music style I confess to loving in the 70's when I first heard it, albeit as a biker, and fan of heavy rock I could never admit to liking it. At the time I was in a band once with Bill Wards nephew - Bill being the drummer of Black Sabbath, so confessing a liking to pop and soul music was a total no-no. But worse still, I recall a game of Frisbee with a hi-jacked, Wigan Casino LP at a late nigh party. This was the wrong record in the wrong place at the wrong time. But given my soulful musical confession, this “game” was as hypocritical as it was cruel. I also recall deconstructing the album cover, where the many pretty badges that adorned it where "liberated." and put to other uses. Such was youth culture in the nasty and violent football thuggish 1970's! Soul fans hated us. We hated them. I've changed; they've changed - thank god.
Now a days, when I am inclined to cop a listen to Lady Gaga's new album, The Tin Tin's, or Florence in the Machine, due to the influence of my daughter, I might also find her listening to The Verve, The Beatles, or indeed 1940's band leader Hal Kemp! These acts have spanned generations and re-position themselves backwards and forwards in time. Hence the way in which the past has a strange and unexpected way of catching up with you. The same is true of ideas. I recently saw something "new" on Facebook. Yet this was something I was intimately involved in as far back as 2006. So it’s an old idea to me, and in putting myself forward to assist this group, the past may well connected to my future.
So here is the "new" idea. A group in Liverpool wants to turn Liverpool's Churchill Way into a park. The flyover is in the city centre and is a typically 1960's structure that links the 1960's arterial main road of Islington to Dale Street. The latter is a much older city centre street dating from Liverpool's original 18th century "H plan" layout; a layout which in many ways predates the grid layouts of modern US cities. The group is called “The Friends of the Flyover” and you will find them under this name on Facebook. Here is what I posted on their face book page....
"What a great idea. I am happy to assist if required. Here’s why. When I was at Liverpool Vision (LV) I hosted several meetings with planners and highway officers about turning the flyover into a linear park, and much more. This was in 2006 after the flyover had been reprieved from demolition when the Liverpool tramway project was cancelled. LV and its partners were involved in several local schemes, and I was a facilitator and envisioner for projects involving the TGWU, Churchill Way, New Islington Norton St, Camden St, St Johns Gardens, and broader “Islington area.” Multiple private and public stakeholders were involved. I was also responsible for suggesting the development of a specialist sports facility on Everton Brow, which was picked up by the Council as “a special initiative.” The flyover link related to this also. Some of these ideas will soon be posted on my updated madeinliverpool.org website
My thinking for the flyover was motivated by my interest in the Promenade du Plantee in Paris. This is similar to the more commonly known New York High Line, but many, many older.
Later still, I was tasked by Liverpool Vision to envision an idea called "Walk of Faith." I came up with an idea for a different type of linear park, involving a necklace of ideas that questioned the division of private and public space. The roots of this grew from work done on the flyover. The project included both cathedrals, the synagogue, the two central universities, and many other organisations. It involved connecting St Johns Gardens to Princess Park and was intended as a Big Lottery application. It was warmly received by everyone, apart from my then CX! I believe the project is on the curriculum for first year architecture students at John Moore's University.
I still have many of the documents for Walk of Faith and may have other documents for the flyover; if not I certainly have some memories.
Later, in 2007 I submitted a Liverpool Commissions entry (with the Merseyside Play Action Council) to turn the flyover into an outdoor children's art gallery. But the £30,000 demanded for highway safety assessments rather exceeded the value of the award, so we dropped the idea
I am sorry if this posting is lengthy. But I have learnt that if you don’t make your own noise in Liverpool, no one else will do it for you. I have never gone public on this before, but this seems the time. So I hope that those who see this posting find it interesting. It is presented here for free, as it was back on 2006. If anyone wants to talk to me about this, please contact me through Facebook, or via my www.madeinliverpool.org website
Keep on Flyin"
Here on my PC I have several documents from this time of meetings with council officers and an arts submission, which I hung on to. Like children, good ideas are difficult to let go of and being an optimist I perhaps knew that their time would come and that my past and future would re-align. So there you go.
I will now close this posting with a comment from another 1970's Icon, David Coleman. In full flow and faced with some challenging concept of a future moment he was prone to say....
"errrrrrrrr what happens next?"
Exactly.
Here's how you might see an example of this in everyday life......
As at 2013 I often see young people using “retro” sports bags, which were pure naff to friends and I, when we were young, and at the time when such products were first introduced. OK these were something new when compared to the old school satchel (which have become equally fashionable today)but many of us in those days were quite happy to use a plastic bags. Interestingly the use of plastic bags today is definitely not fashionable, given a range of environmental concerns. Yet here are retro 1970's sports brand bags "on the street" all over again. At school we would deface them with marker pens, especially other peoples, albeit many kids were equally keen to deface their own! Some with very amusing results as in those days none of us could spell. I recall a friends white Adidas bag with Led Zeppelin written all over it. This was written at least six times, but each one was spelled differently, and each one spelled wrong!
I also see a resurgence of Northern Soul, (catch the Paul Mason Culture Show documentary on You Tube) a music style I confess to loving in the 70's when I first heard it, albeit as a biker, and fan of heavy rock I could never admit to liking it. At the time I was in a band once with Bill Wards nephew - Bill being the drummer of Black Sabbath, so confessing a liking to pop and soul music was a total no-no. But worse still, I recall a game of Frisbee with a hi-jacked, Wigan Casino LP at a late nigh party. This was the wrong record in the wrong place at the wrong time. But given my soulful musical confession, this “game” was as hypocritical as it was cruel. I also recall deconstructing the album cover, where the many pretty badges that adorned it where "liberated." and put to other uses. Such was youth culture in the nasty and violent football thuggish 1970's! Soul fans hated us. We hated them. I've changed; they've changed - thank god.
Now a days, when I am inclined to cop a listen to Lady Gaga's new album, The Tin Tin's, or Florence in the Machine, due to the influence of my daughter, I might also find her listening to The Verve, The Beatles, or indeed 1940's band leader Hal Kemp! These acts have spanned generations and re-position themselves backwards and forwards in time. Hence the way in which the past has a strange and unexpected way of catching up with you. The same is true of ideas. I recently saw something "new" on Facebook. Yet this was something I was intimately involved in as far back as 2006. So it’s an old idea to me, and in putting myself forward to assist this group, the past may well connected to my future.
So here is the "new" idea. A group in Liverpool wants to turn Liverpool's Churchill Way into a park. The flyover is in the city centre and is a typically 1960's structure that links the 1960's arterial main road of Islington to Dale Street. The latter is a much older city centre street dating from Liverpool's original 18th century "H plan" layout; a layout which in many ways predates the grid layouts of modern US cities. The group is called “The Friends of the Flyover” and you will find them under this name on Facebook. Here is what I posted on their face book page....
"What a great idea. I am happy to assist if required. Here’s why. When I was at Liverpool Vision (LV) I hosted several meetings with planners and highway officers about turning the flyover into a linear park, and much more. This was in 2006 after the flyover had been reprieved from demolition when the Liverpool tramway project was cancelled. LV and its partners were involved in several local schemes, and I was a facilitator and envisioner for projects involving the TGWU, Churchill Way, New Islington Norton St, Camden St, St Johns Gardens, and broader “Islington area.” Multiple private and public stakeholders were involved. I was also responsible for suggesting the development of a specialist sports facility on Everton Brow, which was picked up by the Council as “a special initiative.” The flyover link related to this also. Some of these ideas will soon be posted on my updated madeinliverpool.org website
My thinking for the flyover was motivated by my interest in the Promenade du Plantee in Paris. This is similar to the more commonly known New York High Line, but many, many older.
Later still, I was tasked by Liverpool Vision to envision an idea called "Walk of Faith." I came up with an idea for a different type of linear park, involving a necklace of ideas that questioned the division of private and public space. The roots of this grew from work done on the flyover. The project included both cathedrals, the synagogue, the two central universities, and many other organisations. It involved connecting St Johns Gardens to Princess Park and was intended as a Big Lottery application. It was warmly received by everyone, apart from my then CX! I believe the project is on the curriculum for first year architecture students at John Moore's University.
I still have many of the documents for Walk of Faith and may have other documents for the flyover; if not I certainly have some memories.
Later, in 2007 I submitted a Liverpool Commissions entry (with the Merseyside Play Action Council) to turn the flyover into an outdoor children's art gallery. But the £30,000 demanded for highway safety assessments rather exceeded the value of the award, so we dropped the idea
I am sorry if this posting is lengthy. But I have learnt that if you don’t make your own noise in Liverpool, no one else will do it for you. I have never gone public on this before, but this seems the time. So I hope that those who see this posting find it interesting. It is presented here for free, as it was back on 2006. If anyone wants to talk to me about this, please contact me through Facebook, or via my www.madeinliverpool.org website
Keep on Flyin"
Here on my PC I have several documents from this time of meetings with council officers and an arts submission, which I hung on to. Like children, good ideas are difficult to let go of and being an optimist I perhaps knew that their time would come and that my past and future would re-align. So there you go.
I will now close this posting with a comment from another 1970's Icon, David Coleman. In full flow and faced with some challenging concept of a future moment he was prone to say....
"errrrrrrrr what happens next?"
Exactly.
Monday, 2 December 2013
Change, Knitting and Robots
A good friend - Eric Masaba - of www.texxi.com, sent me this link - www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23990211. This links to an article by the respected and experienced BBC correspondent Peter Day. The piece is called "Imagine a world without shops or factories" The crux of the article relates to the rapid pace of change in our world due to innovation. Change that according to Mr Day "could turn our old familiar world upside down."
The article interested me, and I responded to Mr Day as follows:
A very interesting piece and as someone with a mixed past that includes an MBA, technology, independent travel (including mid 1980's China), and urban regeneration I have long been conscious of, and a supporter of, themes that I would call “local economics.” But to some extent I have found little favour with such ideas, at the civic level, from a North of England regeneration perspective. Here the preference was for the large “inward investment” and "centralist funded" projects so prevalent of recent UK economic history.
I can also report witnessing a six tear old being taught to knit in under 20 minutes. Something I regarded as a skills transfer process, one with economic value, and one where skill levels hold great concerns for our economic experts. But the truth is that many such experts prefer to build Science Parks and seek "High Gross Value" rather than engage with immediate needs and issues. This attitude reminds me of past global Victorians building opera houses in places as remote as jungles and the tundra, in order to announce "we have arrived." Such ideas are seen as a folly today.
But big is better for most in the public sector, as well as private sector. Witness Local Economic Partnerships and other economic quango’s. Withing the folds of such organisations I have actually met people who believe that the Knowledge economy is about using computers.
But here is a thought. In a new world of additive manufacturing, are future governments going to have to pay people not to work? And I do not mean unemployment benefit. As to paraphrase an apocryphal story of another US car manufacturer responding to his trade union representative during a strike; the factory owner made the point that “one day there will be no strikes as all my cars will be built by robots.” Technologically this is possible and may well become true, in that such factories will be fully automated with just a few staff to monitor them. But the union representative said, “but robots won't buy your cars” He is also right.
So here is the rub. Individually, we may well be able to make anything, any way, any time, but this won't actually be as democratic as some might think. Entry barriers will prevent this and lead to a new type of production universality around which firms will go on producing consumer goods, but with fewer people involved in the manufacturing process at lower and lower costs. But where will the money come from to allow people to consume such goods, as if you have no job, you have no money.
People may also lose hope, which in an increasingly educated, yet job redundant population, is a very dangerous thing.
So that is my view. What is yours?
The article interested me, and I responded to Mr Day as follows:
A very interesting piece and as someone with a mixed past that includes an MBA, technology, independent travel (including mid 1980's China), and urban regeneration I have long been conscious of, and a supporter of, themes that I would call “local economics.” But to some extent I have found little favour with such ideas, at the civic level, from a North of England regeneration perspective. Here the preference was for the large “inward investment” and "centralist funded" projects so prevalent of recent UK economic history.
I can also report witnessing a six tear old being taught to knit in under 20 minutes. Something I regarded as a skills transfer process, one with economic value, and one where skill levels hold great concerns for our economic experts. But the truth is that many such experts prefer to build Science Parks and seek "High Gross Value" rather than engage with immediate needs and issues. This attitude reminds me of past global Victorians building opera houses in places as remote as jungles and the tundra, in order to announce "we have arrived." Such ideas are seen as a folly today.
But big is better for most in the public sector, as well as private sector. Witness Local Economic Partnerships and other economic quango’s. Withing the folds of such organisations I have actually met people who believe that the Knowledge economy is about using computers.
But here is a thought. In a new world of additive manufacturing, are future governments going to have to pay people not to work? And I do not mean unemployment benefit. As to paraphrase an apocryphal story of another US car manufacturer responding to his trade union representative during a strike; the factory owner made the point that “one day there will be no strikes as all my cars will be built by robots.” Technologically this is possible and may well become true, in that such factories will be fully automated with just a few staff to monitor them. But the union representative said, “but robots won't buy your cars” He is also right.
So here is the rub. Individually, we may well be able to make anything, any way, any time, but this won't actually be as democratic as some might think. Entry barriers will prevent this and lead to a new type of production universality around which firms will go on producing consumer goods, but with fewer people involved in the manufacturing process at lower and lower costs. But where will the money come from to allow people to consume such goods, as if you have no job, you have no money.
People may also lose hope, which in an increasingly educated, yet job redundant population, is a very dangerous thing.
So that is my view. What is yours?
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