(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #246 - Urban Folder: The burden of metropolization (fr, it, pt)

(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #246 - Urban Folder:
The burden of metropolization (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]

We must denounce the social, environmental and territorial model of urban concentration. 
Behind the metropolitan myth, the propertied classes are on the offensive. ---- The law of 
27 January 2014 called "modernization of territorial public action and affirmation of the 
metropolis" has created 9 (then 11) "metropolises" in France. The metropolis is a new 
status of local government with broad expertise in "economic development, innovation, 
energy transition and urban policy." However, it is not only a legal status. The 
authorities encourage this metropolization the name of "competitiveness". ---- Corollary 
selective de-industrialization, metropolization designed to concentrate on the biggest 
cities strategic tertiary activities (management, design, finance, real estate, etc.). It 
is a process that results from the new international division of labor, which is fully in 
line with the requirements of competitiveness and competition that the territories indulge 
(whether for business, land rent, tourism or major sporting events). This spatial logic of 
capitalism transforms the economies of major cities (including at the expense of workers' 
jobs) centralises economic power and eats farmland, natural areas and the quality of life 
of the inhabitants and residents.

To make the city a place of passage of global capital flows, whether material, financial 
or human, we must transport and communications infrastructure. Restructuring expensive and 
accentuate class inequalities, rejecting the popular classes to the periphery.

Major metropolitan projects are supported by coalitions of actors including local 
policies, the state, the great capitalist enterprises, particularly real estate 
developers, and a nebula advisers from architecture or urban planning agencies. Some are 
sometimes directly members of boards of public development institutions. These coalitions 
remind us that the production of the city is involved in the accumulation of capital, 
absorbing surplus in long-term projects that slow down a bit unstable flow of capital. 
Metropolises are overproduced Eaters, with great security for real estate investments.

All metropolises of glorification of evil speech mask the crucial issue that became the 
big cities to the stability of world capitalism, and the processes of concentration and 
foreclosure within them. For us, inhabitants and residents fight to stay there, in the 
right conditions involves challenging the capitalist production of the city, to decide for 
ourselves.

Fanny Meyer (AL Saint-Denis)

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Dossier-urbain-Le-fardeau-de-la