Caring for the Everyday Life and Form of the Urban

A Society can be so stone-hard

That it fuses into a block

A people can be so bone-hard

That life goes into shock

And the heart is all in the shadow

And the heart has almost stopped

Till some begin to build

A city as soft as a body

(Inger Christensen, It, 1969)

(Cited in Sim, 2019)

As we see the world slowly opening up, citizens spending more time outdoors, moving about, redeveloping networks, experiencing ‘life between buildings’ is becoming more important than ever. While the demand for affordable housing and public infrastructure is disproportionate to planners being able to provide spaces that balance privacy and sociability, the stark inequality sets us asking questions about the basic need and quality of our collective resources-

Who plans for them?

Who maintains them?

Who has ownership over them?

Cities and urban communities are made up of a multitude of collective resources or ‘‘caring goods ’, also known as ‘urban equalisers’, the prominent ones include- parks, streets, pavements, social infrastructure and housing amongst others. The need for care (or to become caring) in contemporary city-making has by far been used to improve everyday life, but not enough. And in times of crisis, care is a significant precursor to limiting our need for a reactive approach to governance, based on inconsequential developmental policies.

In the past, within the role of city making and improving quality of life, what piqued many urban scholars’ interest was the balance between provision and maintenance of collective resources and the capacity to enable private entities (such as landowners, developers and investors) to accumulate private capital. Inevitably, the role of the welfare state was seen to be all too frequently compromised in favour of the latter’s emphasis on higher revenue and profit margins, creating a dilemma to even think about the city as a place of ‘care’.

Today world over, we continue to see individualistic logic thrive over collective logic, except for a handful of approaches that truly believe in placing people first as an opportunity for greater resilience. This vicious bias needs to be broken in the Indian urban context as our collective resources have been neglected for far too long, and thus we have never learnt to care for them or reap benefits of their multiple uses and functions. This prioritisation of investing in our collective resources and learning to safeguard them would redefine our common future, in the long run. As for the short run, its usage and demand is strikingly increasing as indoor recreational activities take a backseat during the current pandemic.

The Fundamentals of Care

The term ‘cura’ (care) finds its roots in the Latin literature of ancient Rome. The term has a conflicting past to fully understand it in absolute form, yet relationally care takes on different meanings. On the one hand, it connotes worries and troubles, as when one says that a person is “burdened with care”. On the other hand, care takes up a positive notion, almost devotional, as catering to the welfare of another. Compared to the western ethics convoluting freedom, love and justice, the ethic of care was never given its due, prior to 1982. Thereafter, the care perspective grew rapidly from the development of feminist analysis. In a stoic view, care was central to the system of becoming truly human, amongst several other ethics. Additionally, the literature on the ethics of care suggests that humankind was bound, sustained, and preserved by care. Mayroff (1971) is of the belief that caring has the power to integrate the self with the surroundings by ordering the other values and activities of life around itself. (Reich, 1995)

As we currently grapple with fractured socio-politico-economic orders, through this article, we aim to explore the notion of care in the contemporary city-making around the world.

The primary question that comes to mind is what are the common things we care about collectively? And in line with this, the subsidiary questions being, why should we care about things that we do not have complete ownership over, and how could we better instil ease, comfort, and care in everyday life?

Let’s begin by understanding some of the ideals that care advances on, with regards to reaching a state of ‘moral collectivism’. The belief system starts from the individual and loops in communities through a positive ripple effect.

1. To promote common good and shared interests is basic to many societies; to ensure a macrocosmic state of equilibrium and harmony in the everyday, the idea of monitoring simple economics parallel to monitoring human development through a series of indicators must be undertaken. 

2. Individual versus communal possessions- the degree of consensus about our essential possessions is striking. People have an array of individual interests, yet the majority of these interests are human- such as to eat, to have shelter, and so forth. The remainders are communal, such as shared interests in a clean environment or daily use of communal facilities like streets, water and electricity supply or urban infrastructure. Now more than ever, these possessions have taken a hit in terms of unequal distribution and accessibility.

3. Pensions, education and medical care are not universal truths of human nature, rather, they have been developed to make peoples’ lives better and need continuous attention and resource investment.

4.   To adhere to each and every person, regardless of the society they live in, human rights form the basis of universal principles. If the rights of individuals do not apply at the level of the individual, they do not apply to everyone. Thus, the right to the city cannot be realised until the rights of individuals are promoted and really cared for.

5. To adopt an empathetic attitude towards the existence, condition and development of living (human and non-human) beings, things and/or environments. This ethical belief system when put into action, could translate to caring for our built environment and heritage. 

What does it mean to be a caring city?

The notion of a caring city is shaped by the current context and culture. As of today, Indian cities face the pressure to rectify the inequalities that plague our urban environment: from increasing unemployment due to a precarious yet large informal job market, to long-term challenges such as climate change (which is termed as a pandemic in slow motion), and to a complete erosion of social contract between city governments and citizens over issues such as ownership, healthcare and economic challenges.

On the flip side, cities offer a great deal to innovate, present opportunities for mutual learning and aid through forming global and local networks. The act of caring is elucidated through people-centric planning traditions and language formation across different cultures around the globe, below:

As much as the dense, community living in urban India is known for its economic opportunities and vitality, it is presented with a fair share of hardships. Quite the contrary is the lifestyle of certain indigenous communities that prove to live conscientiously despite the limited to scarce resources surrounding them. We see glimpses of it in a close-knit village community of Mawlynnong in Meghalaya (Northeast India). The synergy between the residents and ecology of the place is a unique synthesis, for they hold the title of the cleanest village in Asia since 2002 along with fairing high on multiple human development indicators such as women empowerment and securing absolute literacy rate.

Cleanliness, sanitation and self-sustenance get spatially manifested through organically grown produce to composting of waste, and by cleaning their households on the inside to sweeping their communal streets is represented as a way of life. There, the self-built bamboo homes surrounded by the centuries-old resilient living root bridges is a striking marker of sustainable practices that city-dwellers and planners must echo in the urban realm.

In Africa,

An age-old African philosophy based on the principles of respect, dignity, and care called ‘Ubuntu’ emphasises our common humanity shadowing interconnectedness. In the context of a city, the concept of a caring city may be demonstrated through:

“I am what I am because of who we all are- the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others”

— Nelson Mandela

• Providing every citizen with the opportunity to participate in civic decision-making by giving ownership of the city to all who reside there, regardless of their vulnerabilities and ‘otherness’.

• Fostering cross-sector relationships by engaging and listening to all members of society, but not limiting to, spatial planning, execution, monitoring and maintenance.

• Delivering job creation, infrastructural services and social support that improves quality for all.

• Protecting the environment by responsible and equitable resource management for current and future generations, with an understanding that every action has an impact on the community, city, nation and our common planet.

• Offering a high-quality life to every citizen with all sections of society centred around their humanity, and the individual contributions they are able to make in improving life for all, thus makes up a responsible and responsive city.

In Scandinavia,

There is a phenomenon of everyday togetherness, better known as ‘hygge’ (ie, the same as hug or literally meaning, to comfort), cherished across Nordic countries. Built on the foundation of taking care of ordinary and everyday things, hygge promotes well-being by making the best of limited resources, respecting laws of nature, and living with the realities of climate change in cold and harsh landscapes. They believe that the hard realities of modern life can somewhat be softened with a little mutual care, dignity, small, low-cost investments.

Care is a concept based on cooperation that needs much focus in our city systems. So given the realities of our Indian cities, how can we better incorporate cooperation between individuals, communities, and inclusive of all three spheres of government? This would require the application of skills in shared planning and coordination – with planning around softer issues such as fostering and incentivising inclusivity, social protection, personal safety and care requiring as much focus as tangible deliverables such as infrastructure development. 

Streets and other such publics are a common ground where the government can programme tactical relief mechanisms, whilst citizens can recover from whatever they lost in transition through active participation. While an overhaul is due on the part of our archaic forms of governing, simultaneously, as we move forward, the fundamentals of care could be a strong suit reflected in education, awareness building and citizen movements.

In conclusion, we have a long road ahead to improve the way in which the city is produced as a common source of livelihood and opportunity. Thus, it is imperative for planners, sociologists, developers, and designers to put people first while thinking of our collective future. As seen in India, Africa and Scandinavian, care is an age-old paradigm, intrinsic to our way of being that we somehow forget to apply in building efficient urban ecosystems. Reprioritising and instilling care within human networks and community-driven spaces could mend a pathway out of the current social recession, as a consequence of the pandemic. These under-utilised common spaces not just provide care for its users, but equally deserve care by its users. Care becomes a two-way street or rather balanced, and thus, less of a burden, eventually.

References

Arora P (2020) Caring in the times of Corona Available at: https://medanthucl.com/2020/07/01/caring-in-the-times-of-corona/?fbclid=IwAR1I9wnqZBKAcScLh_YQ43j4mVkDXgfEie-4nlOz6n-BiYunY-z349cRgAg

Care for the City: Rethinking urbanism and ethics, Cardiff University

Indlela Growth Strategies (2013) Metropolis Annual Meeting: Caring Cities, Prepared for Metropolis and the City of Johannesburg

Reich, W (1995) History of the Notion of Care Encyclopedia of Bioethics. Revised edition. Edited by Warren Thomas Reich. 5 Volumes. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1995. Pages 319-331.

Sim, D (2019) Soft City Building Density For Everyday Life. Washington DC: Island Press.

Spiker, P (2019) Thinking Collectively: Social Policy, Collective Action and the Common Good. 1st edn. Great Britain: Policy Press.

All images via City Sabha