An Old or New Urban Issue?

Abstract

The collaborative forms of urban creation and consumption direct my analysis towards the ‘urban question’. Following Manuel Castells, I ask how, by organising their everyday life on the housing estate outside the capitalist economy, self-sufficiently, and from the bottom-up, the residents created cooperative forms of everyday supply, consumption and even organisation of work. Collective consumption was created in a manner resembling modern autonomous zones (Chris Carlsson or Hakim Bey) in accordance with the principles of social economy. Following the everyday life of Żoliborz residents, I also consider questions posed by Merrifield, for whom Castells’ ‘urban question’ is becoming outdated by today’s standards. Merrifield leaves the ‘right to the city’ logic behind in favour of the ‘logic of joyful encounters’, spontaneous Occupy movements and something akin to the ‘jacqueries’ analysed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. In the midst of Żoliborz’s public activity forms, I search for manifestations of what Merrifield called the ‘new urban question’. Cooperative trade, gardening and plant cultivation as well as cafeteria and health care, developed at the cooperative estate level, became not only cooperative, self-help economic institutions, but above all, ideologised anti-capitalist strategies. Cooperative thinkers provided a broad theoretical reflection on the above strategies, skilfully combining cooperativism with socialism. Activists and reformers, on the other hand, trying to improve the functioning of the cooperative, taught residents rational shopping and saving habits.