Have you also learnt to deal with doctors' room visits by diverting the attention to objects in the room, or to the doctor themselves?
Do you like to go away for the weekend? Did you follow Tito on twitter? Last time I saw you, your knee was giving you trouble? Oh wow, I also have a copy of that anatomy book!
That one, they’re never expecting. What Doctor would give away their copy of Netter? What City strategist would be given one?
Walk into almost any Doctor’s office and they will have Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy on their desk or bookshelf. Paging through it, you’ll be able to dissect each layer of the human anatomy in all of its complexity - the systems of cells, vessels, bones and organs that make us work as a whole. And yet despite these known standard anatomies, medical mysteries remain.
No such book exists for the City1. Take any given problem, and there might be an engineering network perspective, or a municipal rates-seeking perspective, or a rights and justice based perspective. And then, behaviourally, something occurs that is entirely different.
Just as the medical field is starting to learn that the anatomy of the body is not discrete from that of the mind, in emergent fields like psychoneuroimmunology, so people who work on cities have argued “the city is not a tree” - meaning, its not a hierarchical system that can be neatly and logically broken down, but rather a complex lattice of physical and social parts that interact.
The title of this post is inspired by Dr Gabore Mate, who among others wrote “When the body says no: the cost of hidden stress”. His biopsychosocial approach appeals to me, this is a key theory taught to South African social workers.
Working with people in different communities it was always clear that our context, designed in a way that we often had no influence over - long before we were born, or at levels of power far beyond our reach - matters. Where we live matters. How we are treated matters. Mate’s research shows three key sources of stress that can cause life-long triggers of ill-health (both physical and psychological) - these are uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control.
Just like the body says no in response to these same factors, places also say no. Trauma that has built up either through deliberate or accidental disempowerment and lack of care manifests to societies that refuse the orderly patterns, plans and policies from above - in misinformation, violent protest, NIMBYism, and hyper-securitised estates, and others. Some might say but aha! I have it all wrong - its the planners, politicians and developers who are the “true” manifestation of illness…after all, there are always two crowds - the protesting and the protested, and each looks on the other as a mob2.
Some sociologists argue that reality is created only by social consensus - what the collective mentality is, is the social order of the day. It is not necessarily “logical”, “objective” or even in the best interests of the collective.
So, in a place with so much designed and ongoing trauma, and so many instances of “no”, how do we begin to heal so that our social consensus looks after the whole body?
While in my day job I am usually focused on the technical interventions, I was recently reminded by a “philosopher” team mate that logically mapping everything out might miss the soul of the issue. So as an antidote to the technical world, which forms part of rectifying the infrastructure, the spaces, the allocations of resources, I’m going to loosely borrow from Mate’s 7 As:
ACCEPTANCE - I think this is more about acknowledgement. Acknowledging there is a pain, and accepting that we are worthy of the work to improve it. Its the difference between branding ourselves as the best, and saying we have our issues, but we have hope.
AWARENESS - Listening to all parts of the city and being open to the perspective, warning signals, and curiosity that provokes. After all, don’t our Doctors tell us to listen to our bodies? Sometimes “no” is a lifesaving insight… This involves more than tick-box or performative engagement, and boils down to empathetic leaders as well as an openness to incorporating ideas and initiatives that have developed from outside of official structures.
ANGER - Giving space to anger, so that it doesn’t have to build up until it destroys, remembering that spontaneous destruction is rare - it has almost always occurred in a context of prior attempts to express frustration and needs. Practically, this means engaging across difference - not fighting wars through the media, but investing in mediation and facilitation. Where there is outright criminal behaviour that can be directly linked to the promotion of criminal interests such as organised syndicates, of course common sense suggests the rule of law prevails. Allow the same common sense space for compassion towards frustrated minorities experiencing uncertainty, lack of information, or loss of control.
AUTONOMY - without autonomy, there is eventually resistance. This does not mean the absence of interdependence or responsibility (next point), but it does mean that our bureaucratic systems, plans, decision making processes should allow as much as possible for people to freely cooperate. More and more “the system” practices and talks about co-creation, but what does this look like from the other side? Where do people have space to express control over their lives (for example in choosing where to live, work, how to recreate, create, etc)? I am not sure if I have ever seen a City decision making process consider “does this increase or decrease choices for people?” or “does this increase or decrease autonomy?”… key strategies on energy provision, water resilience and mobility are frequently driven by a government-centric view of protecting revenues, or protecting political power.
ATTACHMENT - acknowledging our connections to others, our “more in common”, that democracy is more than a ballot box - it is community, it’s consensus building, it’s relying on each other in times of crisis. Why did so many community efforts fizzle out when the immediate threats of lockdown, unrest or flood damage faded away? Was it because people lost belief that we were building anything better than before? Got frustrated with the hard work of attachment? Or are you like me and find self-isolating a good form of escapism? People respond well to unifying experiences. Nostalgia for what could have been is not a call to action, nor is the argument that the world is ending. I am guilty of both, yet when I leave the house I am endlessly inspired by the ability to build tomorrow with my neighbours. Creating more moments for that builds a city that says yes.
ASSERTION - we have certain rights within our Constitution, but these are not always lived without permission as intended, with equal freedom and enjoyment. In our own spaces, and in all our projects, we must assert these rights and demonstrate in our own ways the freedom to live without permission. Examples of this are embedding considerations of gender in projects, investing in changes to public spaces, schools so that they reflect these freedoms, and investing in legal centres counteract any forces against these rights.
AFFIRMATION - affirming our own and the rights and responsibilities of others. The biggest way we can do this, is through affirming the right to the city. In every interpretation of that - by definition, council includes members of the public - lets see more of us present in meetings. Lets see affordable housing across the city. Lets see safe, good quality public spaces in every community.
There are, of course, many great books about cities. Introduction to Urban Science would probably be a close equivalent to Netter in its dissection's of systems from a analytical perspective. However, for every rule there is a rule-breaker - after all, the city is not a tree and sometimes it says no…
Inspired by Crowd dynamics and mass psychology of possibility, as essay published in Expect Resistance