CONTRADICTORY ALLIANCES

and Beijing, stating that references to the One- China principle have “no place in the sister cities agreement.” 9 When Trzaskowski received London mayor Sadiq Khan in Warsaw in September 2019, he announced that, despite Brexit, London would continue to be a part of European city networks. The cities produce their own vision of international politics.

Medieval cities were free because they had created their own economic, political, and cultural microcosm inside thick walls. Today the concept of freedom is closely linked to internationalization. Freedom is equated with openness. Free cities get rid of local constraints and become more open towards the wide world outside. However, they also need to wall themselves into a microcosm and protect themselves from the political and cultural climate most closely surrounding them.

Connections with the outside world become abstract and international. Will the future Europe be a region where independent cities pay taxes directly to the European Union, which will offer them subventions and military protection in return? Of course, national governments will not let this happen. At present, the Orbán government steers legislation through parliament, removing powers from the municipalities. In Hungary, school textbooks and curricula used to be the domain of municipalities, but the government has recently centralized these activities, emphasizing patriotic education.

“Cities against governments” is a current topic in other areas and has been theorized by Henri Lefebvre ( 1968), 10 the anarchist Murray Bookchin (1987), 11 and, more recently, by Benjamin Barber (2013). 12 In recent years it has most typically been linked to ecology and immigration.

In China, several cities provide tax subsidies for green technology, although the Chinese government seems averse to national projects for energy conservation such as binding caps on emissions. 13

Sanctuary cities are another example. Sanctuary cities welcome illegal immigrants and refuse to cooperate with governments when asked to track and expel them. In Germany, 120 mayors signed the alliance named Seebrücke (Sea Bridge) out of solidarity with southern European cities under pressure of immigration. Throughout Europe, many cities have declared themselves ready to receive more immigrants, even though this goes against laws enacted at the national level.

These developments have widened the urban-rural divide in which the decision to live in a certain city becomes a life choice more important than ever before. Sometimes cities provide an identity more distinct than the one provided by the country.

“City patriotism” has attracted interest in academia. Avner de-Shalitt and Daniel Bell, in their book The Spirit of Cities, coined the word “civicism” to express the sentiment of urban pride. 14 Cities can express their own distinctive ethos or values distinct from the ethos of the nation. On several points “city patriotism” is different from the patriotism of nations because civicism remains shaped by the (generally assumed) open mentality of city people.

City patriotism is more flexible and often indebted to an ironic attitude through which it attempts to distinguish itself from regular patriotism. Even when civicism appears in stronger doses and can be called “city nationalism,” the love for one’s city lacks the serious and sometimes frightening dynamics which fuel regular nationalism.

What is loved is not so much an anthropologically established national culture with fixed customs and rules that need to be preserved at any cost, but a more fluent ethos present in the form of a spirit or tone of sentiment that is prevalent, though not obligatory. Civicism can afford being more playful because it is not linked to serious subjects like the army or wars (except in some cases concerning medieval city-states).

One can be willing to die for the nation, but the city life tends to unfold in a more playful sub-zone surrounded by a nation. To some extent, city patriotism only parodies national patriotism. This does not mean that preferences are not well-pronounced and clear-cut.

The four mayors’ network is reminiscent of the historical alliances of Free Cities in the late Middle Ages, such as the Hanseatic League. The question is whether these city networks can really empower urban humanity in the long term. It is possible that, while they are celebrating their networks, the rural populations around them may vote to exit the EU, thus cutting all their funding. It may be a little naïve for cities to rely only on international networks.

Improving everyday situations and educating the population are always also a local matter. Still, the mayors’ initiative is positive because it lets those politically suffocating cities breathe easier right now.

Thorsten Botz-Bernstein is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait. Notes and sources for this article are available at peacemagazine.org/archive/v36n3p21.htm#notes

The love for one’s city lacks the serious and sometimes frightening dynamics which fuel regular nationalism