Hosting International Events in a Time of Global Crisis: Place-Making and Recentralization

Hosting International Events in a Time of Global Crisis: Place-Making and Recentralization

Elena Trubina

Paper presented at the 3rd International Workshop on Post-Communist Urban Geographies

(Tartu, 17-19 September 2009)

Introduction

I’d like to begin by citing the Ekaterinburg newspapers thatincreasingly write as follows: “More than forty five ‘objects’ that wereplanned to be built in the city won’t be finished because of the world financial crisis.” Globalization that has gone awry and the crisis that isits most visible outcome serve both as a powerful explanation and a great excuse, with very porous borders between the two. ConsiderMr. Putin’s statement in his recent interview with the Bloomberg news agency:“Russia has become part of the global economy, and that is good. On the other hand, the current crisis is the price we pay for our ardent desire to become part and parcel of the world economy.” (Pinchuk, 2009).One senses that it is really getting difficult to say what (or who) is the agent and what is the object of the on-going processes we are only beginning to make sense of. Amidst this complicated dialectic of agency and endurance, a great deal of international activity is taking place, includingthe Shanghai Cooperation Organization trans-national summit that was held in Ekaterinburg in June 2009, followed by the BRIC summit. It is the run-up to the SCO and BRIC summits, the ways they are presented to the public, and the public response to the authorities’ attemptsto justify the considerable expenditure that I focus on.

This paper draws on research conducted before, during, and after the summit. I interviewed strategically placed officials andbusinessmen, had conversations with the architects, and undertook a review of newspaper coverage and public discussion of the summit on Internet forums.I conductedparticipant observation at the sites that wereopen to public in June, but the security measures were so severe that I couldn’t take any pictures.I should note that a lack of both “hard evidence” and access to detailed data, along with the unwillingness of key informants to openly share their views, leaves a researcher little choice except to try to make sense from the official story.However, I hope this combination of methods provides a basis on which to consider the shifting relationships between theory and ground when it comes to analyzing the most recent changes specific for post-Soviet urbanity.

In the work I’ve been doing on post-Soviet cities, a key point of interest to me is how the contrast between the ordinary and the extraordinary in city life is something that has been put to work and is used to make decisions, mobilize activities, and produce identities and anxieties. My basic point is simple: political events, public celebrations and ceremonies, and festivals and other cultural events are not only supposed to raise the profile of this or that city but to provide an important opportunity for citizens’ engagement. However, in the research cases that I’ve previously studied, it was obvious that the space for citizen participation in these events and ceremonies has been shrinking, that the decisions about what to celebrate and how to stage this or that event have often been made without taking into consideration the interests of the city inhabitants.

For instance, what differentiated St. Petersburg’s 300thanniversary is that it signifiedthedevelopment of a city festival from being part of the national and city culture to a constructed event designed not only to attract tourists but to turn the city into a“presidential” capital.While being exposed for months to all sorts of inconvenience related to the major face-lift their city was given prior to the celebration, the city inhabitants were not shy in pointing out that this event was not actually “for them.“ As one of my interlocutors put it, “For some it is a good chance to make a fortune while for the others it all is about politics.“ He said that a city celebration concerns all its inhabitants, but, when asked how he thought it would be possible to make the celebration “for all,” he had difficulties answering(Trubina,2006).It seems that the post-Soviet public’s image of itself remains vague and elusive. Indeed, what does establish the public presence of “simple people” when it comes to national (or international, for that matter) celebrations?On the one hand, more and more things in cities have been done for sake of “politics,” while on the other, there is a growing public alienation from all politics, including international. Therelatively indifferent reception of Barak Obama during his recent visit to Moscow serves as a striking example of the latter (Levy and Barry, 2009).

There areexpertswhosaythat if one understands by “politics” political discussions, expressions of disagreement with the actions of the powerful, genuine elections, and opposing political parties, then internalpoliticsinRussiaceased to exist (Aronson 2007). Although I agree, yetthere are signs of public activity in various cities.This activity remains rather low, but if one wants to understand the current social dynamic, there is no other way except to look at localized urban politics (or at what is left from them). Even given that international political events are often of little interest to the public, it makes sense to look at the “cost” of their organization to the locality where they take place, including the public estimations of this cost.

The preparation and framing of big events, inevitably raise the question of whom cities are for. The efforts of place-making that the authorities undertakereceive, as a rule, a very mixed response for exactly this reason: place-making rarely occurs without struggle. Iintend to demonstrate this by addressing the following issues: first, the complex dynamics of urban, regional, national, and global scales; second, the new temporal dimension of urban transformation that the crisis has brought; third, the way the security issues were handled; and fourth,the ambivalent combination of authorities at all levels thinking both in terms of “grand projects” and their own business interests.To be candid, this paper seeks, first, to elucidatethe constrained agency of regional and municipal governments, their policy choices and space for maneuver under the ambivalent circumstances of the need to host an international event using rapidly shrinking resources and second, to make sense of the public reactions toward the event, its cost, and its connection to regional and municipal social policy.

Multi-Scalarity of Urban Changes

One of the curious characteristicsofthis time of global financial crisis is the number of international events that have been taking place, beginning with unprecedented diplomatic activity and ending with mega-events such asthe recent Intervision song contest that took place in Moscow. One possible explanation could be very simple: difficult times demand both consolidation and a common will and a chance to cheerup. On the other hand, the crisis amplified the tendency that was commented upon long before it happened, namely, that the global processes, regardless of how greatly they are facilitated by the Internet, are difficult to imagine without them being periodically localized in particular places and becoming“social spatio-temporal ‘hubs’ and ‘switches’ . . . that channel, mix and re-route global flows” (Roche, 2000, 199). It is not only that global and local scales intersect during these events but variety of other scales do so as well (the most important being regional and national).. For instance, nations and the regions, as well as cities, aim to “brand’ themselves as the competition for visibility and related benefitincreases (Anholt 2004, Potter 2009). However, as a rule, it is in the cities that the overlaying of various scales becomes especially evident. Henry Lefebvre was among the first urbanists who discerned the contradictions between the integration of the “world market” and “regional differentiation,” resulting in “generalized explosion of space” (1991: 351; 1979: 289-90) that takes place under capitalism. As Neil Brenner pointed out (commenting on these ideas), “Throughout the world economy, urban regions are among the key geographical sites in and through which this multi-scalar reconfiguration of capitalist spatiality is currently unfolding” (Brenner 2000, 361). Bob Jessop also emphasizes that globalization is multi-scalar “because it emerges from actions on many scales,” which makes the term itself somewhatproblematic since “what could be described from one vantage point as globalization might appear quite differently (and perhaps more accurately) from other scalar viewpoints: for example, as internationalization, triadization, regional block formation, global cities network-building, cross-border cooperation, international localization, glocalization, glurbanization, etc.” (2001, 2). Consequently, traditional criteria according to which foreign and domestic state policy was differentiated appear to be problematic as new forms of international cooperation appear and sub-national entities conduct foreign policy (200,336).

Jessop thus argues against an overarching narrative of globalization as a one-dimensional causal process,describes globalization as taking place in “the context of the uncontrolled and anarchic coupling of co-evolving structures and systems” (2000, 334), and warns about the possibility of the combined failure of the market, governance, and the state. The current crisis surely can be thought ofas a striking realization of this possibility.When we think about its local configurations, Jessop’s idea about the interplay of different “time horizons” (short-, medium-, and long-term, business cycles, electoral cycle, long wave, etc.) and different spatial and/or scalar horizons (local, national, supranational, etc.)(2000,335) seems particularly salient. For instance, as the crisis is deepening, the global scale that just recently was positively referred to in Russia as the one on which political influence was exercised and economic cooperation developing, appears to becoming a major rhetorical device for abdicating responsibility both from the higher and lower levels of power to the “global forces.”At the same time, there are attempts to change the priorities of economic politics. As the West-oriented dimensions of foreign policy, trade, and cooperation prove inefficient or difficult to maintain, Eastward-directed steps and measures increasingly become more popular among authorities at all levels.Before the crisis, some regions of the Russian Federation were very successful in developing economic cooperation with Western countries and regions. For instance, as metallurgy comprises more then 50 per cent of Sverdlovskaya oblast’ (region) manufacturing, it was European countries that used to purchase raw materials and some products of metal manufacturing, thus contributing to a relative economic stability of a otherwise rapidly de-industrializing region . With the crisis, the traditional patterns of demand were lowered, to the extent thatgeneral international trade with the region was reduced by30 per cent. As a result,it is now often said in the pressthat European financial instability greatly affects industry in the Urals (Kober, 2009). The re-orientation towardsAsian countries that are able to more efficiently cope with the consequences ofthe crisis seems quite logical under these circumstances, especially given the location of the region in the midst of Russia and it remoteness from Europe. In 2008, the most significant “trade partners” of Sverdlovskaya oblast wereKazakhstan (1, 5 thousand million dollar) and China (778 million).

In the West, globalizationis thought to be accompanied by the de-centralization of the governance as sub national and transnational power holders emerge. One of the difficulties of thinking about the new scalar dynamic of the post-Soviet cities is that in Russia there is a trend toward extreme recentralization that, in times of crisis, gets combined with the state’s ridding itselfof all expenditures that don’t promise immediate benefits. If in the framework of the multi-scalarity concept the argument is against “container” thinking and in favor ofamorphous “scales,” which are constituted by the flows and variously directed currents of finances, ideas, and goods, there is a sense in whichmany urban tendencies in Russia could be better described through the lenses of the levels of the state hierarchy, when the highest ones direct the distribution of resources and enjoy most of the benefits.

The summits that apparently were thought of as part of the chain of events and measures designed by the Russian state to politically question American dominance, were held in “subordinate” territory where, it was expected, the authorities, out of loyalty and desire to keep their positions, would find the resources to properly conduct the events. This is where the concept of multi-scalarity meets, so to speak, the peculiarities of the current Russian “vertical power ”political system. There are several components of Putin’s successful building of this “vertical,” i.e. highly hierarchical, state governance. First is the revision of property rights and the increase of state control over the major economic assets via the state corporations (Baker and Glasser 2005). Second is the system of presidential appointments of regional chief executives that was introduced in 2004 and was preceded by the abolition of the election ofmayors in favor of the governors’ prerogative to dismiss themayors(Gel’man 2008, 175). This recentralization was based on the redistribution of regional finances in favor of Moscow and of municipal ones in favor of the regions. Investigating how the “federal” or “governmental” interests overlap with local ones is further complicated by the fact that local interests are far from being homogeneous. For instance, there is an on-going conflict between the region's chiefexecutive—the governor—and the mayor of the region's capital.It had to be suppressed during the run-up to the summits, while the relationships between the local business community, on the one hand, and the regional and municipal authorities on the other, worsened as the summits were approaching. The authorities were trying to compensate for economic difficulties by using severe administrative measures, i.e. the businessmen whose venues were located on so-called guest ways were obliged to clean, renovate, and decorate them. At the same time,long-standing city problems such asintense traffic congestion were temporarilyresolved by introducing severe mobility limitations.

Ekaterinburg is one of those cities that underwent a multifaceted and complicated transition at the time globalization was unfolding. With a population of slightly more than 1.4 million, Ekaterinburg is the fourth largest city of the Russian Federation, a major industrial, transport, and business center. It is the capital of a region that has a high concentration of manufacturing. Someof the difficulties of transition stem from the fact that it used to be a military-industrial complex site, a closed town that was not opened to foreigners until 1991. Within twenty years it has turned into something different. It is a hub of international air travel. The EuroAsian international transport-logistics center was constructed in 2008. It is a city where about fifteen foreign consulates (including American) reside. It is also a city where several trans-national companies and retailers have their plants and shops[1], where such Western companiesas the Hyatt Hotels Corporation, the Finnish construction firm SRV Group,and the Norwegian firm Wenaas Grouphave have built hotels, and where the previous decade experienced a real estate boom, After numerous shopping centers were built and fostered consumption of branded consumer goods through a monopolized network of delivery, the base of the economic accumulation of the local elite was consolidated.

The geography of the city thus can be analyzed first from the point of view of capital accumulation (and globalization). Second, when it finds itself simultaneously in a global context and firmly imbedded in “vertical power” (which, among many things, means exchange of personal loyalties and financial resources) the question arises about the extent to which the state influences the social andspatial impacts of different elements of globalization. This influence is exercised both directly and through the “divide and share” game of the federal government as, for instance, when the prime-minister calls on governor Eduard Rossel to report on what has been done in the city to prepare for the summits, in the city where Arkadii Cherntesky is a mayor. The complexity of the scalar relationship in an empirical case like this has to do with, first, that SCO and BRIC summits are international events that are run by the “center” on the territory of a particular city using many of the resources of the region (Sverdlovskaya oblast). It gives an opportunity for rethinking scales beyond global and local.

Temporalities: Neoliberal Politics With a Soviet Flavor

What kind of links emerge between a city’s attempts to attract global capital and its coping with the consequences of political and economic recentralization? How, in a locality’s striving to become a globalization site, does a general intensification of intercity competition combine with the state’s positioning itself as the ultimate distributor of all resources?

One way to approach these issues seems to be to take into account the temporality of the events and tendencies in question. The SCO and BRIC summits are short-lived collective, political, and cultural actions, which nonetheless not only have long-lived pre-event economic dimensions but significantly change the way the city looks and will look in the future. The regional and municipal authorities strive to capitalize on the summits by rendering them “extra-ordinary” events, emphasizing, among other things, their representativeness, their political importance both for the country and for the Ural region, their large scale, and their impacts (Roche, 2000). However, if mega events (the Olympics or world cups or film festivals) have considerable mass appeal, “in addition to having lasting impacts on ‘host’ societies and their popular cultural institutions,”international political events do not, as a rule, fire the public imagination. As a way to cope with public indifference, regional and local authorities use, as one of their favorite rhetorical figures, “putting our city on the world map” and actively speak about the close links between a city’s image and future economic benefits. On the conceptual side, sociologist Barbara Adam speaks about how politics and economics create futures that “may extend temporary from the very short one to the extremely long one and spatially from the local to the regional, national, international and the global” (Adam 2009). In this vein, one could say that a few days in June were something in which local authorities heavily invested: economically, politically, and symbolically. But now things change;many objects for the summits will, indeed, not be built because of the global financial crisis. The future is, in a modernist manner, still considered an outcome of one’s actions in the present, but the present itself is changing so rapidly that the priorities one got used to (for instance, the city as a growth machine) may need to be reconsidered. Different temporalities have been at play in the rhetoric and actions of officials and businessmen. One of these can be linked to the narrative of globalization. It is on the map of a globalized world that authorities see the city, as is obvious from the mayor’s statement that, “With the opening of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, a new phase of the city’s history has begun.” The other temporal pattern can be derived from Soviet times with their “fulfill the plans by any means” motto. When the investor in the Ukraina hotel, which the Chinese delegation has chosen as their residence, recently confessed to difficulties with the credits and the price the city authorities charged for implementing the water supply, the governor interrupted him and said, “There is no point to share your difficulties with us. TheChinesedelegationhaschosenyourhotel. Thusthesituationisthis: diebutmakeit!Ifthereisnorunningwater, we’llhavetoorganizeits supplywithbuckets.” Official networks of temporality, characteristic ofSoviet times, imposed on regional authorities (or perhaps incorporated by them long ago), prompted them to react in a traditional, if not archaic manner: “I won’t allow disgrace for our region to happen,” said governor Rossel. And finally, a word about the businessmen, especially those who invested a great deal but failed to finish their projects. They have been ordered to cover their sites with camouflage, to re-assemble them so that an observer can’t see any hint of an unfinished project, or to finish the buildings in the “die or make it” manner. They admit to numerous risks in investing in commercial real estate. As one of them said, “Since long-time credits are no longer available,it is too bad there is no way I can ‘freeze’ myprojects and come back on the market in a year or two when everything settles down. I have to go on since I have collected the assets for too many years, piece by piece. I can’t sell them now or give them up since I’ll never get them back.” Ironically, duration, sequence, and planning now come to the fore as priorities for investors and developers. To repeat, an interesting temporal dynamic is at play when one tries to make sense of the drastic reduction in the number of originally planned structures and roads.