Urbanism and the public sphere

Title's a bit unfair, as this is actually a very large topic, and I'm picking out a smaller, arguably tangential angle:

Africa’s rising cities -- How Africa will become the center of the world’s urban future (WaPo).

But within this sprawling article, this caught my eye, in the discussion on Lagos:

That is what most Lagosians can afford — in part because services such as water and sewage, which in other countries are subsidized by the government, are controlled in Lagos by private companies that often overcharge for what they provide.

Even public transport is a misnomer: Danfos and motorcycle taxis, known as okadas, are all privately owned. That makes it easier for elites in the government to routinely ban them.
...
Lindsay Sawyer, a researcher at the University of Sheffield’s Urban Institute who has written extensively about Lagos, said many of the city’s problems stem from the fact that nothing is really public.

This is a pattern that comes up again and again in urbanization. You see it, for instance, in the history of New York. Basic infrastructure like water and even fire fighting used to be private (as dramatized in Gangs of New York). Large leaps in urban quality of life nearly always involve moving core services from the private sphere into the public one -- transitions that depend on building up a real, solid "public sphere" (aka the commonweal). Public control without a true sense of common/public space just become public corruption -- it's the creation of a true sense of a public sphere, with accompanying government investment, that makes the difference.

It'll be fascinating to watch Africa urbanize. Successfully transitioning their urban spaces into great cities is not inevitable -- even in wealthy countries like ours we see how powerful the interests arrayed against urbanism and the concept of public life are -- but I'm rooting for them, and hope we'll be talking about Lago and Mombassa in the same way we talk about Paris and New York. And while we're at it, maybe we can try to avoid throwing out the progress we've made in this country and get back to investing in our own commonweal.

People don’t believe in the common weal any more. You see that in the anti- mask, anti-vaccines, anti-restrictions protests and ‘discussions’; and prior, in much of the libertarian discussions. ‘Small government’ movements and the whole ‘sovereign citizenship’ thing only demonstrate how fixated people are on individualism and me-for-myself. They rarely give a proverbial for Community, seek to minimise paying any tax whatsoever, and only wish to pontificate (poorly). No real thought in what it takes to make a modern city or country function let alone grow.

joanne said:

People don’t believe in the common weal any more. You see that in the anti- mask, anti-vaccines, anti-restrictions protests and ‘discussions’; and prior, in much of the libertarian discussions. ‘Small government’ movements and the whole ‘sovereign citizenship’ thing only demonstrate how fixated people are on individualism and me-for-myself. They rarely give a proverbial for Community, seek to minimise paying any tax whatsoever, and only wish to pontificate (poorly). No real thought in what it takes to make a modern city or country function let alone grow.

I would say that in the U.S., at least, it has been so long since we really had to pull together as a nation (WW II), that people have forgotten the value of the common weal.  That will change in the years to come.  And it won't be particularly pleasant for anybody.

tjohn said:

I would say that in the U.S., at least, it has been so long since we really had to pull together as a nation (WW II), that people have forgotten the value of the common weal.  That will change in the years to come.  And it won't be particularly pleasant for anybody.

Why do you think it will change?

STANV said:

tjohn said:

I would say that in the U.S., at least, it has been so long since we really had to pull together as a nation (WW II), that people have forgotten the value of the common weal.  That will change in the years to come.  And it won't be particularly pleasant for anybody.

Why do you think it will change?

Well, that is actually a fair question.  Perhaps I should say that an effective response to the rise of China and global warming requires that we come together as a nation.  Of course, I suppose we could just as well retreat into our own safe spaces / states / regions and let changes to what they will to us.  The Brexit crowd seemed to think that Britain could somehow pretend it wasn't part of Europe.  I understand some are having second thoughts.

STANV said:

Why do you think it will change?

I don't think it will. We are heading toward being a 3rd world autocracy. 

Survival of the fittest.