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June 05, 2006

Whose Streets?

Some months back (March 28th -- it fell down the back of the couch) Polityka had a promising article on the encroachment of public space by private property ("Wspólnie nie dla wszystkich"). It would be naive to think that the Polish reader would find in such a magazine anything about Critical Mass or Reclaim the Streets -- they have a long way to go before they reach that stage -- but even still, I expected better. You or I or any anarchist might suspect that capitalism is what lies behind the transfer of land from public to private hands. After all, the article itself talks of how "...ever more places are losing their public character: entrances, doormen and tickets are appearing." (This goes also for national parks.) But not in Poland. The author, Pawe? Wrabec, draws the conclusion that communism is to blame for this. It is a "sad legacy of the PRL [Polish People's Republic]... a form of reaction against the restraints of the earlier political system," in which the attitude was that what belonged to the state belonged to no one - and therefore was mistreated ("pa?stwowe, wi?c niczyje").

You can see his point (or you can if you live in Poland) but it seems kind of convenient to blame rapacious capitalism on communism.

Wroc?aw, Wrabec writes, earns five million zloties a year from renting out public space to beer gardens and so on. Wrabec describes this "river of money" as a gold mine (literally, a "golden vein"). About 40 lines later he gives some context to the figure of 5 million zloties. 480 million zloties represents one quarter of Wroc?aw's income. So if the city were to keep its public spaces public it would mean foregoing .0029%* of its budget. Not such a golden vein after all.

* Correction: it would be .26% of the budget. See comments.

Posted by hgrodsk at June 5, 2006 11:18 PM

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Comments

I'm just using the numbers you provide. I didn't read the article.

Since 4 x 480,000,000 = 1,920,000,000

and 5,000,000 / 1,920,000,000 = 0.0026041667

and when we turn it into a percent we move the decimal back two spaces...

That would give us .26041% No? Granted, two and a half tenths of a percent isn't much, but it's 100 times more than the figure you provide.

However two and a half tenths of a percent can mean the difference between funding a program to encourage job creation or innovative technology, both of which Wrocław has been much better at doing than just about any other Polish city, and which Poland needs much more than public spaces - which abound.

Is this 'rampant capitalism' so bad? Wrocław is arguably the most prosperous city in the country.

Posted by: Gustav at June 7, 2006 06:41 PM

Quite right. The "golden vein" is in fact about a quarter of one per cent of the city's income, much larger than I calculated.

Posted by: Henry Grodsk at June 7, 2006 09:24 PM

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