Land and Power
(and the overlooking of community)
1. Well, we know what Robert Moses did to New York: lay the groundwork for racist urban planning and ‘improvement’ projects that initiated a domino effect all around the States. With beauty, high property values and Benjamins rolling as a result of his mandated neighborhood evacuations and next-to-nothing compensations, as long as the scales tipped towards profits, as long as Robert Moses was allowed to hold sway. African American citizens lost homes for the sake of white people’s recreation, for bridges to be designed intentionally low enough to specifically disallow public transport (buses that non-white demographics frequented) to reach places of opportunity. Barred from homes, parks, and buses – that was lower class Black citizen life in the States. How did things get this far? Robert Moses chaired, among other positions, the New York State Council of Parks and was the 1st Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, from 1924 to 1963. He rose to power, writing proposals from one position and passing them from the other. Despite public protests against him, against his decisions, despite politician promises, Robert Moses stayed, holding this power for personal gains, influencing the city, the state, and the country.
2. Beginning in 2011 with Bahria Town Lahor, and continuing on to this day, Riaz Malik has developed multiple Bahria Towns, implementing real estate revolution throughout Pakistan and lending the visuals and aesthetics of power that upper class citizens the world over crave for their homes. These towns, gated compounds, parks, malls, encroach upon the land that civilians – usually lower, working class – already hold deeds to. These are deeds that, through the convoluted local deed recognition system, (not unlike the Indonesian local system, mentioned in the earlier post exploring REDD+’s true impact) Riaz Malik takes advantage of how the deeds are not always recognized by official courts, despite the deeds being, in local businessman-to-businessman context completely valid. Protestors against the development at the cost of the poor, the ‘inconvenient’, tend to be harmed by police/security/mafia hired by the developer. More and more people move into luxury homes, reducing the density of the city as these homes oust and rob the actual landowners of their rights, properties and even compensations. More and more the cities of Pakistan sprawl, widening the commute time, opportunity gaps of education and economy, and the class gap. In more recent years, Riaz Malik has been sued by the people, and been made to pay a fine worth millions of PKR, by the Supreme Court. But this money’s source, processing and current whereabouts are a bit of a mystery, perhaps due in part to the corruption of the government that Riaz Malik is known to be hand-in-globe with.
3. NEOM’s launch in 2017 and more tangible developments in the following years have boasted features of a city belonging to the vague, but thriving, tomorrow – not, conceptually, unlike what Robert Moses did to NYC, or Riaz Malik did to the cities of Pakistan. Each project revolutionizes the cityscape, the economic sector, the job opportunities available with the onset of these urban renewals of NYC and Pakistan.
NEOM is not urban renewal, though. NEOM is more of an urban creation, an urban zygote if you will, still undergoing growth/evolution/meiosis, with features of the city morphing as time goes on. Take the Line – going from the initial plan of 170 km length, to 3.4 km, a 98% cut in size. Was it budget? A lightning bolt of common sense? Did the sustainability department’s memo finally finish making the rounds? Regardless, at least there’s an improvement in a) the scope and, b) achievability of the project. But this is still production. Post-production may change NEOM’s shape further… and what of pre-production? What of the 2,000 indigenous Bedouins forced out of their land with little to no compensation (wait, why does this situation keep repeating itself across time and geography and government?) – not to mention the mysterious death of the dissenting leader of the tribe, the man who protested this forced displacement and fought to keep his family’s land. In the grand scale of things – the initial NEOM masterplan of things – this area did not take up much of the envisioned NEOM, and the city could have been planned around it. Now, as NEOM shrinks and adjusts, this is an even more obvious path that could have been taken, in hindsight. How much more ghost of NEOM will these people have suffered and lost for?
It’s alarming to take in – these lesser advantaged lives, unmet potentials, deserving human beings – robbed over and over again, time and time again, place to place… what ties them all together? What could possibly be the underlying link if not the endemic greed of corrupt officials, of governments grasping for more power and recognition, of individuals without either enough foresight, or lacking in basic care of and consequences for the public.
In a previous post, I reflected on a sort of global culture of capitalism that merges tastes and identities and people into a single upper class. I would carelessly expand that here to say, a class where individuals’ wants and performance in society are so replicated and de-individualized, that replacing one individual with another would not affect the status quo – and together, these strange individuals making a sort of singular massive hammerhead shark: to carry out both the mallet-ing of judgement, and the execution of society.
And then, doesn’t this culture trickle into the government, when those individuals make up the chairs and boards of power, the hedge funds, the educational institutions, the banks? Where does community even figure into all this land and power? What collective power does the community have when the law is in the hands of those that could rewrite law against the community? How did Robert Moses get to where he went, do what he did, if not through taking advantage of the laws and policies, through ensuring he could both write and pass acts as he pleased? How did Riaz Malik accomplish this decimation of countless of civilians’ possessions of lands if not without implicit government approval of/lacking just prioritization of civilians’ rights abuse? (This is talked about further in the assigned reading Land by Derek Hall.) How was NEOM approved if not without responsible, forward thinking that included sustainability of both urban and rural areas, of tribal land rights, of the present as well as the future? If the budget of NEOM ran into such bulky millions, why were they not able to afford at least significant monetary compensation for the displaced bedouins?
The answer, I think, is that the policy allowed it. Pakistan was able to catch Riaz Malik in a case through its National Accountability Bureau (NAB). While further effectivity needs further delving into, it is still a measure that, if ensured to be unbiased, would benefit each nation it’s placed in. Let’s look at it another way: Where was the accountability for Robert Moses? Where was the accountability when NEOM was launched? If Robert Moses, even if he smuggled himself into both sides of the law, still had to have his actions passed through some sort of Accountability Bureau that not only checked his proposed and passed acts, but also the people the acts effected, and fought back against these acts, would there be an alternative, more just NYC today? If Pakistan’s NAB’s efficiency increased so as to ensure not only justice but speed and compensation for the public affected, raising flags for other Ministries in the government to start working on consolidating a fair, broadly applicable land deed recognition system, would we not be seeing a more equitable set of scales not tipped against the working class’ property rights? If Saudi Arabia had an accountability bureau without bias towards either the government, or the people, and was able to provide rulings on whether certain expenditures and their effects are conscionable or not, would we not be seeing an urban growth that focused more on the humane-with-an-e aspect of sustainability?
I definitely need to study more about government structures and policy-work, but I do believe that communities, unlike in Scotland, need more power on their side that comes from somewhere other than the simple existence of the community; ideally both legislatively, and in action, through a platform of politics dedicated towards them and them alone, one that is not swayed by whichever government currently in action, that holds a solid and unmistakable voice for the people, allowing them a more even ground to fight for their rights and improve their conditions. I mean, only since the governments these days – whether municipal, national, or global – are clearly not cutting it.
