Urban activism
Phil McManus' discussion on issues facing urban activists, while containing positive elements, also contains many errors. On the positive side unlike so many advocates of urban reform, such as eco-cities, he at least attempts to provide some sort of strategy for attaining greener and more socially just cities.
However his suggestion of adopting an "economics of amenity" is unconvincing. Essentially this perspective calls for activists to make alliances with business and developers to get them to invest in profitable cultural industries and provide facilities such as parks, light rail and public transport to attract tourists and consumers.
The examples he cites in the USA should be regarded with some skepticism. While some limited gains may have been made in centres such as Ann Arbor the limitations of a consensus approach are clear from the redevelopment of areas such as south-central Los Angeles. Similar disparities could easily happen in Australia.
While McManus' strategy may achieve some minimal results activists would be far better off to focus on demands such as more spending, stricter controls on developers and retrospective taxation on companies which threaten to disinvest which would democratise control of economic and political decisions. Such measures would also need to be located within an overall strategy for social change involving mass social movements.
Ben Reid
New Farm Qld
Universal condition
In answer to the letters of Alex Aitkin and Teresa Dowding (GLW #78), the transnational capitalist system is one which has evolved over several hundred years. To personify it as the Root of all today's Evil is naive and counter-productive.
The capitalist system is certainly inequitable and those who care about those disadvantaged by this and other systems must continue to fight for reform.
However, inequality and the dominance of the strong over the weak has been with us since human evolution and sadly appears to be a universal human condition, not the primary result of an inequitable and destructive economic system.
To deny that the human species has reached plague proportions is to bury one's head in the sand. Peter Anderson, in his feature article on the World Bank and environmental destruction, quotes Susan George as saying that human activity 50 or 100 years ago was so small compared to the biosphere that little effect was made on the environment.
What, then, has changed in only fifty years?
The answer is human numbers and technology. Thus the = PAT, is explained by the environmental Impact being effected by Population size x level of Affluence x degree of Technology.
The global ecological collapse which stares us in the face today has come about as a result of these three factors multiplied together.
Until we can bring ourselves to admit that the human population explosion this century is a major contributing factor to our present predicament, then we can achieve little in averting the disaster that confronts us.
Diana Evans
Balwyn Vic