Stephen Polk "A city by and for the people" **** [MUSIC] Hello. And welcome to Mindful U at Naropa. A podcast presented by Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. I'm your host, David Devine. And itŐs a pleasure to welcome you. Joining the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions - Naropa is the birth place of the modern mindfulness movement. [MUSIC] Hello, today I'd like to welcome Stephen Polk to the podcast. Stephen is a core candidate and assistant professor in the Environmental Studies and MA Resilient Leadership program. So, welcome to our podcast. [00:00:57.06] STEPHEN: Thank you. Glad to be here. [00:00:59.09] DAVID: Would you like to introduce yourself a little bit? [00:01:01.07] STEPHEN: Yeah, my Stephen Polk and I actually grew up in Denver metro area. I received BA and MA in political science. I also - have uh - numerous uh certificates in permaculture. Uh so of course the permaculture design course and advance teaching course and I've done a number of other uh workshops. And, currently I'm in a mentorship with Jason Gerhart - a preeminent permaculturalist here in Denver or used to live here in the Denver Boulder area, but relocated to St. Louis. And so soon I will have a permaculture diploma in permaculture. But, uh - my studies really combine politics and permaculture. And it is at this intersection that I've been putting a lot of time and energy not only on paper and you know at the computer screen, but also on the ground. [00:01:57.04] DAVID: Yeah. And what you will be talking about today the ideal city - so if you'd like to ahead and tell us what you think the ideal city is. [00:02:04.20] STEPHEN: Great. I've always been attracted to Urban environments. And - you know growing up in the suburbs - the city was always like the cool place that I wanted to be where everything was happening. So, I spent the last 17 years living in Denver and I also spent a short time in New York City. But I love the density - like I love the pace uh of cities and so that's reflected in my scholarship. So, in addition to studying politics - and studying and engaging in permaculture - uh I also have a strong affinity in my scholarship and also activism to - the urban center. And this ideal city - well actually before we begin I think itŐs important that we don't have a whole lot of imagination when it comes to - envisioning alternatives to the existing system. How might the city look differently if you were given more power to shape the contours of the cityscape or to shape the institutional fabric and I think if you were to pose that question a lot of people would you know pull up blanks. Or even politically. If you were to ask someone how could our system be organized different politically? Perhaps you would blank. Or how could our system be organized different economically? What might a different economic system look like? And how could that economic system provide more material security, freedom and - whatever else that that is - you know that the people would still draw blanks. So, uh this podcast really is trying to cultivate this idea of our urban imaginary uh to cultivate a political imaginary economic imaginary. And what I mean by that is the ability to imagine something different than what exists currently. So, in this ideal city we're going to be imagining uh what it might be like in a different way and so there are - you know thousands of different aspects of uh - of a city ecosystem uh that I could have chosen to address. But I am going to address just four. And these four I have - all four I have direct experience with. Uh and they are community ownership, ecological sensibility, economic democracy, and people power. So, we're going to go through each one of these and highlight some of how it might exist in this city. [00:04:30.18] DAVID: Ok. [00:04:31.14] STEPHEN: So, this first one is premised on the idea of community ownership. So, if we look at uh - and community ownership by community ownership I mean community ownership of housing. Community ownership of the workplace or like worker owned cooperatives. And also to community like ownership of the institutional fabric as well. And community ownership of institutions we have to a certain degree at in theory. Uh you know the government of public system uh is run by our tax dollars and you know we have some democratic power there. We can run for office essentially. But I'm really interested in this idea of community ownership of housing. So, there is two models that we've been presented over the years. The first is private ownership of housing. And this the dominate ownership model that we're facing today. Individuals or you know companies uh like mortgage companies, the development companies own a majority of the housing stock in this country. And they can buy and sell the housing stock on the market. And then the other model, is state ownership. And this is a model that was a key component of the urban redevelopment programs of the 1950s and 1960s. It's where the government like you know will own the housing projects and people rent from the government. Uh, but these two models I argue are ultimately failed. So, if we're to look at private ownership in Denver currently - there is an 80-thousand-unit shortfall for affordable housing units. And, this statistic means that there are 80 thousand people in the rest of the city of Denver alone - who are rent stressed. They're paying more than 30% of their income to rent. And, this happens - this is happening at the same time that Denver is going through a construction boom and uh in apartments and condos and in housing. The law of the market has it that that housing is only going to be filled for people with money. Uh where the profit margins are the highest. The housing is not going to be built to mean the means of - very real needs of you know 80 thousand of its residents. It would rather cater to those who can pay you know a million dollars for a new condo in the ballpark neighborhood of lower downtown neighborhood. And so, there's something fundamentally flawed about the private ownership model housing. And when you start trading housing on the market you also inevitably will create scarcity. Uh so someone is always going to be excluded from the private housing model. So, state ownership. And there are numerous examples of state ownership - housing projects throughout the 60s and the 70s - one of the most famous is the Pruitt-Igoe housing projects and for many reasons the Pruitt-Igoe uh model failed. But I think we can safely say that the public housing model is not a robust model either. [00:07:30.02] DAVID: Can you explain that model to me because I have never heard that? So, what does that mean. [00:07:33.17] STEPHEN: Yeah, so housing projects were a response by the government in the 50s, 60s, and 70s to meet a very real need of housing. And so, public governments often times at the aid of the federal government built these large massive housing projects. And, what happened a lot with these public housing projects is that they concentrated poverty and in very high-density areas. And, what often resulted from that was crime, unhealthy disproportionate impact on the overall community. And, you know the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex was eventually destroyed. It was you know blown up. [00:08:18.06] DAVID: Essentially destroyed. [00:08:19.04] STEPHEN: Yeah. I mean it had literally toppled. I think a lot of that was because you know perhaps - I mean the fact that it was destroyed is indication of just how - or just the emotionally, economic and political toll that you know such a model exacted on the citizens of St. Louis or the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex existed. And so, the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex is just one housing complex in St. Louis you know among many across the country and there actually have been more or less successful I think you know models of different public housing models, but at the end of the day the federal government can be just as exploitative or uh out of touch with the residents needs as private housing developers. And so, the third way - the third sort of - or middle path here uh is community ownership. This model can take - there is numerous examples of this model currently and they - can exist in different forms. So, cooperative housing is a means of uh community ownership. So, communities they or people, members of this co-op. They become a member of the co-op and when they become a member of the co-op they become a co-owner of it. And, when they become a co-owner in the cooperative movement in general it is democratic. So, every member owner in a co-op has a vote. One member, one vote. So, its member owned. Democratically controlled and its affordable. There is some nuance with cooperative housing. Some of it - some models within cooperative housing are not affordable, but we're actually creating uh a limited equity co-op at our house right now where individuals can receive limited return on their investment in the form of equity in the organization that they're living in. But that amount of equity is limited so that we can provide affordability and perpetuity. And so, its member owned democratically controlled, affordable housing. And we think that we can scale this model but we think that this model is - most effective because the members who live there own it and if you own something you're not only emotionally invested and you're not only engaged in democratic process with your neighbors which I think is incredibly healthy, but you also have equity stake or ownership stake in the house. And I think all of those things spell for increased investment in the house. Uh and you know it just - it creates conditions for optimal care of -- so, and we think that this model you know should be the number one model across cities. And of course, you know itŐs now the silver bullet. I am sure there is going to be you know problems just like with any human creation and itŐs you know scaling up to implementation across cities, but we think that it should at least be explored. So, uh after community ownership is this deal of - that I think is critical to the ideal city is uh kind of like a personal individual but also interpersonal and uh social sensibility uh which I call ecological sensibility. And, it is something again, that we don't have a lot of in our culture. And, in order to explain ecological sensibility, I want to use permaculture uh but permaculture is a combination of permanent culture and permanent agriculture. And its approach to landscape design that is ethical. So, there's a set of ethics in permaculture design. There is - a set - there is a set of principles in uh permaculture. There is like an underlying philosophy of how humans should and could relate to the ecosystems that surround them. So, permaculture as a discipline is an approach to designing ecosystems and social systems and in this approach, it equips people with the knowledge or the literacy, the ecological literacy that is necessary to - in order to interact in ecosystems and social systems in a way that is beneficial. And also, effective. And that sort of ecological literacy you know again is lacking uh it also bestows upon people the correct skills and technical knowledge. Uh in order to maximize energy use. And in order to, for example, collect water off of your roof in order to you know water the plants. And here in the desert high plans of Boulder and Denver you know collecting and storing the energy is absolutely essential. Uh so it encompasses that uh but the ultimate aim I think with permaculture is teaching people that you know ecosystems matter. That ecosystems provide all life on the climate and the more we damage ecosystems the more we damage ourselves. And so, with this broken relationship that currently society has with the ecosystems permaculture uh you know offers a different relationship. And I think a relationship that is ultimately more powerful. So, if we're thinking about this in terms of an ideal city we need people engaging and interacting with ecosystems in a way that benefits people and the planet and also generates a surplus. [00:13:48.00] DAVID: Yeah and if we're not following the ecosystem of the locations we are living in then we're essentially going against the grain. [00:13:56.02] STEPHEN: Yes. Yeah and well we're expending a whole lot of energy in going against the grain. Our lives could be a whole lot easier if we were to harness the power of nature. And work with it. [00:14:07.20] DAVID: And the earth would really enjoy that. [00:14:09.06] STEPHEN: Absolutely. And well we would enjoy it too. So, in addition to ecological sustainability this is the other aspect I want to touch on is economic democracy. And, economic democracy - I mean a lot of people when you say that term probably don't necessarily know what it means uh - but we live in a democratic - a so called democratic country. But democracy for us is only - is very limited in the - in a political sense. Where maybe every 2 to 4 years we can vote. And, and I think that I mean voting itself however important and essential it is I think because a largely ineffectional forum of political participation uh that we need to expand democracy to mean not only making decisions together in the political sense but also in the economic sense. And there is a lot of models that we can utilize in - utilize as guides in democratizing our economy. Democratizing the workplace. For example, the Mondragon Corporation in Spain employs 80 thousand people. And itŐs one of the 10th largest corporations in Spain and its uh a cooperative and as I was mentioning before just as with housing cooperatives in worker cooperatives every member owner is - has one vote. So, one member, one vote. Every member of the cooperative owns the cooperative. And, so it is this uh a model as Mondragon in Spain demonstrates that uh can be implemented to scale uh and is also incredibly successful. But one aspect of this economic democracy that I really want to focus on - is the pay differential between managers and owners compared to the pay differential between managers and owners her in the United States. So, in the Mondragon cooperative because I think in large part due to its democratic nature the pay differential between the average manager and the average worker is 5 to 1. In some sectors in Mondragon the pay scale is 10 to 1. In other sectors, its 3 to 1, but the average is 5 to 1. Now compare that the United States where we don't have economic democracy. Uh and in fact most of the business decisions are made by managerial class of people. Uh where the average worker has no control over what is produced, how its produced, pay and relative pay distribution uh and relative to you know other workers, but the pay scale can be as high as 500 to 1. Especially if we're talking about CEO to average worker. Uh in some industries even higher. Uh and so that not only creates more inequality, which has its own host of problems but itŐs also very undemocratic. And as a democrat - so called democratic people I am surprised that people in the United States put up with this. You know because there is out there where - where we can have more control. Where we can have more democracy. I think we should equate democracy with freedom. Uh that we should advocate more for both. Uh - so - that's the idea behind economic democracy. [00:17:12.10] DAVID: Very cool. Some more work to be done on that. [00:17:16.11] STEPHEN: Yeah, a lot of work to be done on that. And so finally, focus on this idea of people power. And this is the fourth aspect of the ideal city and one way that I describe this is that I was walking in my neighborhood - its Capitol Hill in Denver and there's a new luxury apartment complex going in down the street. And I was like man you know that's going to create upward pressure on rents you know that displace the people who live there before. You know gentrification in Denver just like in every other major city across the country is like really having a detrimental and disastrous impact on our cities. Uh but itŐs like man what would it take for people of modest means or people like myself uh living in a cooperative that operate on - that operate with others in a democratic process - what would it take for us to be able to get into a situation of power or a position of power in order to dictate what was being built, where those luxury apartments or luxury condos were being built. And so, I think this is an incredibly important aspect of an ideal city. And I often use permaculture as an example of this. By permaculture you know we can create the most beautiful social ecological landscape designs that are ethical, that provide for people's needs, but if those designs or if we don't - if permaculturalists or cooperatists or you know activists or anarchist or whoever - if we don't have a seat at the decision making table where all the decisions are made that shape the cityscape unless uh we don't - unless we can realize our own power those designs are never going to extend beyond the personal property line and they are not going to extend beyond the drafting table. So, if we're serious about these ideas of an alternative city there is more just, human, ecologically sustainable but is more free and more democratic then we need to first recognize what power is. And then beyond that we need to understand how to get power. And then to access that power in line with our values. In line with who we feel that we are as a - as a people you know ethical, moral, spiritual, whatever. So, there is a lot of ways that you can do this but and I won't go into those, but I do just want to really talk about the contemplative aspect of building community. Uh because ultimately our power lies in people power. We need other people in order - as a source of our power. And in contrast elites have organized money as their power. So, we need to have organized people because we don't have a lot of money. And so, and this is where I think a huge contemplative aspect of activism resides and we mention this a little bit before by living cooperatively but the aspect of living with the other. Of being able to reconcile your own self interests in the context of a larger whole, which I actually think is at the heart of democracy. But that aspect itself is contemplative in a sense that first you're able to learn more about what yourself interests and what your needs and desires - material, spiritual, otherwise. So, you develop a greater intimacy of self. And then in the context of a larger whole when you're reconciling that self-interest you learn that you are intimately connected to every other person that you are interacting with and that the health of other people in your community is also -- necessary for your health. And so, individual health, individuals create strong community. Strong community foster individuals. And so, the more that you engage in this democratic process you - the more that you realize that the is distance between self-interest and community interest is probably much shorter than you thought because itŐs based on the realization that almost all spiritual lineages have which is everything is connected. We are all connected. Socially we're just as connected to the farmer and the truck driver driving our produce as we are the soil organisms that helped grow that food. Uh - and so, that's really where the contemplative aspect of - of community living resides. Uh and where we can realize our humanity. Our individual nature in concert with others in order to create and bring about an ideal city based on ideas of community ownership, ecological sustainability, economic democracy and people power. [00:21:49.20] DAVID: Beautiful. ItŐs really interesting to think how community and dialogue can take you so far and to have the democratic process to actually have a truthful engaged democratic process and collectively see what everyone is thinking and wanting and how can we all benefit together. Since we are living together we are in community - what benefits the whole. Working as a unit. [00:22:15.17] STEPHEN: Right, and what benefits the whole benefits the individual. You know we could scale that example up to you know society currently but there is - politically right or libertarians for example libertarians in the United States - actually the word libertarian comes - it used...someone on like the far radical left in Europe and libertarian - like if you are going to state it properly you have to say United States libertarian. If you're referring to libertarians here, which are on the right and they're anti-tax. But, you know there is a sentiment of you know someone saying well I don't want to pay for schools because I don't have any school age children anymore. And so, that person's self-interest is not being uh apparently is not being met or seemingly not being meet by paying taxes for schools. And so, you know why should they pay? But, if we didn't have education in this society or any civilization did not have some form of education - uh we would not be where we are today. So, education benefits everyone. It may not be apparent right in front of you, but if you were to take away some of those social safety nets or the social services that we all chip in to provide you know perhaps we'd be approaching bolgerism. [00:23:34.16] DAVID: Yeah. ItŐs all an investment to becoming a greater community society uh collectiveness. You know so if we're all willing to invest and put our personal-ness aside and come together we all benefit. And like you said itŐs all beneficial to everyone. So - I subscribe to that. [00:23:56.14] STEPHEN: Awesome. Right, and of course the state I don't think is a very effective model for the administration of you know society in general. I think we can come up with better models, but at least for right now itŐs you know itŐs what the best that we have. [00:24:10.21] DAVID: Yeah awesome. So, I really appreciate you being on our podcast today. It was really fun talking to you. [00:24:15.11] STEPHEN: ItŐs fun talking with you. And uh thank you for doing what you're doing. [00:24:19.09] DAVID: Thank you. So, I'd like to thank Stephen Polk for being on our podcast today. He is a core candidate, assistant professor in the Environmental Studies program and also in the MA Resilient Leadership Program. So, thank you. [00:24:31.16] STEPHEN: Thank you. [MUSIC] On behalf of the Naropa community thank you for listening to Mindful U. The official podcast of Naropa University. Check us out at www.naropa.edu or follow us on social media for more updates. [MUSIC]