Andrew Boraine

Greg Clark 

Well, we were really honoured when we discovered that our good friend Andrew Boraine in Cape Town is one of the listeners to The DNA of Cities podcast. Andrew is here with us today. Andrew, let me ask you, what have you enjoyed or found meaningful about the podcast series so far?

Andrew Boraine 

Thanks Greg, it's wonderful to talk about this, this great subject. And overall, I've enjoyed the concept of the DNA of cities as a metaphor to understand and explain similarities and differences between cities. I've enjoyed the distinction that you make between the endowed traits of cities and the inherited and acquired traits of cities.

As a partnering practitioner I’m pleased that you have been talking about civic action being built around trust, belonging and identity. In my work, which is about helping people in cities and towns change and adapt, I use a similar concept around identity, belonging and meaning, the so-called ‘IBM’ of human behaviour change. So I really enjoyed that theme that you've drawn out of the podcasts.

I've also enjoyed your point that every city has an origin story, but who tells the story, and who is included or excluded, and how that story changes over time, becomes an important question. Another point I've really enjoyed in the series is from one of your earlier podcasts where you say that human beings acquire places and then seek to belong through adaptation. In other words, human beings shape the city, but are in turn shaped by the city. And I love that juxtaposition. So for me, there are three to four powerful themes that I've identified with through your podcasts.

I found one of your earlier podcasts, on the DNA of Istanbul, particularly interesting. I visited the city for the third time earlier this year, and I'm visiting again in a week's time. The Istanbul podcast was a wonderful introduction to the themes of decline of empire, tension between the city and the nation states, and dealing with rapid urbanisation. I want to recommend three books to augment what you've said in that podcast to your listeners. One is the well-known Istanbul: Memories in the City by Orhan Pamuk where he talks about hüzün. It's a Turkish word, a kind of a state of collective melancholy, life amongst the ruins and the long slow decline of an empire that is still inherent in the city fabric. It's like the duality of attitude mentioned in the podcast, ‘alas where has it all gone?’ But at the same time, the city has a wonderful Mediterranean style of living. So you refer to the bright geraniums, even in the poorer areas of Istanbul.

I also recently read a book by Bettany Hughes, who writes about the Tale of Three Cities. She ends with this concept of Istanbul as a cosmopolis, or cosmopolitan city, a word coined by the Greek Diogenes the Cynic, meaning ‘belonging to all the world.’ Sometimes if you have a parochial notion of the DNA of cities, it can be 'our city is better than other cities, and we in this place are better than those people in that place'. Obviously, this is a very narrow interpretation of the DNA of a city. It's a kind of competitive ‘race to the bottom’ ‘better than thou’ attitude, which I don't think is really what you're trying to get across with the DNA of Cities, but it can be interpreted like that. Bettany Hughes' concept of a cosmopolitan city, not just limited to one part of the world, and free from local, provincial and national ideas, prejudices or attachments, is useful. One can be torn between different loyalties. You can be from Cape Town but love Istanbul at the same time.

I also recently read a book called Arrival City, by Doug Saunders, which has a fascinating chapter on Istanbul. He describes the death and life of a great arrival city, namely Istanbul. And in your podcast, you talk about to succeed in Istanbul, you must have an appetite to thrive. In other words, there's a contract between the old and new residents, and the city continuously being renegotiated. In this chapter, I came across this concept of gecekondu, 'gece' meaning night, 'kondu' meaning settling overnight and if you built your house overnight, the authorities couldn't knock it down. I've been interested how the ‘outsiders’ of the 1970s and 1980s in Istanbul are now the political insiders under Erdogan in the 2020s, who of course was a former Mayor of Istanbul.

Greg Clark 

Wow, Andrew, thank you so much. Firstly, to say, we'll make sure of course, that all of those books, and I certainly think that Pamuk and Hughes are already in our reading list for the DNA of Istanbul, but I'm not sure about Doug Saunders. So we'll get him in there. Then the other thing to say is that I love, particularly because you're such a leader in this space, how you see the connection to civic action and collaborative leadership. Because more than anybody else, I know that that's where you have amazing expertise. I think there is something about understanding the DNA or the origin story or the soul of the city that does create this sense of belonging that's so critical to the social capital that you must mobilise if you're going to have collaborative leadership. I hope to say a bit more about that in a minute but thank you so much, I'm so glad it's enriched your experience of Istanbul, which is very important. We deliberately started the series with Istanbul for all the reasons that you've just said. Let me go on to the second question, Andrew. So, you know, you've been thinking about cities for fifty years and you've been kindly listening to the podcast. What does The DNA of Cities concept now mean to you, then? Where are you with this idea?

Andrew Boraine 

Well, Greg, I pulled a fast one here. I asked my friend Chat GPT what does ‘The DNA of Cities’ mean? And it told me that there are a number of ways DNA can be metaphorically interpreted for cities, all of which makes sense, for example, a blueprint of identity, foundations are core, inheritance and legacy, and uniqueness. But there was a fifth point which I really liked. Chat GPT talks about city DNA as interconnectedness and for me, this is what the DNA of Cities is about. In other words, DNA is composed of sequences of nucleotides that are interconnected in a specific way. As a metaphor, DNA can represent the interconnectedness of different elements in a complex system. This can be applied to relationships, or to organisations, or any situation where various components work together in a structured manner. So, Greg, you've often talked about your understanding of the city as an ‘interconnected system of systems’, rather than just looking separately at the buildings, or the public spaces, or the history. Many professions tend to look at cities in a disconnected way – either as urban services, or local government, or city finance, or past civilizations, but it's when you bring it all the elements together - the political, social, geographic, climate, historical, the urban systems and material flows, the governance institutions, that you can understand how a city is made up. For me, therefore, The DNA of Cities means how is the city connected with itself. We know there are many internally disconnected cities, which are usually terrible places to live except for a few, for example, elite enclaves with high walls adjacent sprawling urban settlements of poverty. These are not healthy cities for anyone, so for me, it’s about striving towards a more connected city - not just connected to the global economy but also connected to itself, inwardly, because so many of our cities are divided.

Greg Clark 

Andrew, I happen to know that one of your interests is music. And the music that individual cities produce is obviously part of the unique creative production. Have you had a chance to think much about the relationship between the songs or the music that individual cities produce them what it says about those cities and who they are?

Andrew Boraine 

One of the earliest songs about cities I remember listening to was Downtown by Petula Clark in the 60s. I was a youngster, and my Mum’s cousin used to sing it in a band. And I thought at the time, what or where is downtown? It was years later that I learned it has come to refer to the traditional urban core or historical central business district of (mainly) North American cities, often with pejorative connotations of urban decay, homelessness and poverty, and business and residential flight to the suburbs or edge cities.

In the late 1970s, and early 1980s, I was very influenced by punk rock, new wave, reggae, ska - there was lot of great music coming out of London at the time, particularly London Calling, by The Clash, and Ghost Town, by The Specials, in response to the Thatcher years, about rebellion on the streets, and the anger of the youth. And this connected with what was happening at the time on the streets of Soweto and other townships in South Africa.

Years later, in my city blog Cities for People, I wrote a piece called ‘Bright Lights, Dark Alleys’, about some of the songs which best describe city life, for example, Summer in the City, by The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Message, by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Inner City Blues, by Rodriguez, Uptownship, by Hugh Masekela, Living for the City, by Stevie Wonder, City of Immigrants, by Steve Earle, and Waterloo Sunset, by Ray Davies and The Kinks.

Music can tell so many stories about a city, about the history, memory, identity, belonging and meaning. Culture is expressed through stories and one of the best ways to tell a story is to sing it. Human beings remember the words of a song much more than the words of a story, or a speech or lecture. Every city has its bards and songsters. To understand a city better, you need to listen to songs about that city.

Greg Clark 

It's such a rich area, Andrew, and we've promised each other that we'll have a proper conversation about this. And we certainly will, and I look forward to compiling with you some songs from each of the cities. Let's go on to the next question, Andrew, which is I want you if you will, to pick one city, and to tell us about what that city means to you and to talk about the DNA of that city as you see it.

Andrew Boraine 

I guess it must be Cape Town, my hometown. I started off thinking, what are the different names for Cape Town over time? Because ‘City of Cape Town’ is a very strange name if you unpack it. If you go back centuries, this place was called Camissa, the ‘place of sweet waters’ by the indigenous people. One of your themes is how human habitation is always connected to water - water for life and wellbeing, water for crops and for livestock, water for transport and for military prowess. So it's interesting that Cape Town starts off its life as a ‘place of sweet waters’. But Cape Town is also originally called Hoerikwaggo, or 'mountain in the sea' because it's so distinctive – a recognizable flat top mountain sticking up out of the sea.

Cape Town was also called the Cape of Storms by the Portuguese, who in 1510 suffered a massive defeat where Admiral De Almeida and sixty or so of his crew were killed by the local inhabitants. Thereafter the Portuguese avoided Cape Town and branded it as the Cape of Storms, saying: 'don't go there. It's an unfriendly inhospitable place'. And then along comes Sir Francis Drake, and he says, 'My goodness, this is the fairest cape of all. This is the Cape of Good Hope!' So he started with a very different kind of city branding, probably representing the English on the ascendancy of their empire, at the stage when the Portuguese were declining. The Dutch knew it as 'De Kaapsche Vlek' or the Cape Hamlet or literally the speck on the map. When Cape Town had 7000 inhabitants, the Portuguese city of Batavia, where Jakarta is now, had 100,000. So, at the time, it was the speck at the bottom of Africa. Writer Lawrence Green in the 20th Century refers to Cape Town as the 'Tavern of the Seas' - a place where East meets West (a little bit like Istanbul). People have journeyed to and from different parts of the world via the Tavern of the Seas. Cape Town is also called the 'Mother City', as the oldest city in South Africa. Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. I think of all the apartheid laws that were adopted in the Parliament building in Cape Town, which post-1994 were all undone in the democratic South Africa. So you've got multiple layers of history, described by different names for the same place. As an amateur historian, I'm always interested in these layers of history piled up upon each other, that conspire to produce a unique DNA.

How do we tell this fractured story in Cape Town? Edgar [Pieterse], for example, talks about that intergenerational trauma inflicted from the destruction of the hunter-gatherer economy and the herder economy, by the imposition by force of the settler-slave economy, and later the British imperial economy, followed by legal segregation and the apartheid economy all before we get to the transition to democracy. Even after that, in the past 30 years, we've had equal amounts of failures and successes with state capture and corruption. So who tells that story? How do we tell it? For me, that's one of the most difficult things and there's nothing better than to take a group of people and hit the streets and walk the built environment and tell the stories through the names and the places and the buildings. So that's some thoughts about my city, and I can't wait to help put it in your next set of podcasts.

Greg Clark 

Oh, well, firstly, Andrew, thank you. You've brilliantly illustrated how the different names that a city has, can speak to different strands of DNA or different character traits, however you want to put it, and Cape Town's obviously a city, it's so rich in this regard. I also love what you're saying about who tells the story? And when do they tell it? And how do they get to tell it and who helps them tell it and whose story is not told? This becomes I think, very fascinating. This moves us immediately on to the next question, which is, what are your recommendations to myself and Caitlin, and Ivor, about which cities we should feature in future episodes, you can have as many as you like.

Andrew Boraine 

The general point I would make is that in your next series, there must be a greater focus on the cities in the global south. Virtually all of them are colonial and postcolonial spaces, which have very particular characteristics, and a very specific insertion into the global economy, many quite extractive relationships to this day. You have conditions of informality and the paradox of urbanism without industrialization, and access to the benefits of urban agglomeration, with the insertion of small elites into the global economy, and continued marginalization and poverty of vast numbers of citizens. So that story needs to be told, whether it's Jakarta, or Sao Paolo, or Nairobi. That would be one recommendation.

And perhaps in slight contrast to what I’ve just said, you must talk about Berlin in one of your podcasts. I've just read a fascinating book called Berlin: The Story of a City by Barney White-Spunner. He’s an ex-British military officer, and I thought, 'hmm, what story is he going to tell?' but it’s a fascinating story, and well told too. And in terms of the DNA of Berlin, he keeps coming back to the theme of unwillingness, or unwille, the stubbornness of the people of Berlin through the ages. Berliners simply did not always accept what the ruling classes, or the ruling party are throwing at them. What I didn't know, is that Berlin was the least Nazi-supporting city in Germany in the 1930s. And yet, it gets singled out as a city to this day for being the capital of the Third Reich. But apparently Hitler and Goebbels didn't even like the city and wanted to kind of reshape it in a very different fashion. Berlin was smashed up by the allied raids and by the Soviet invasion. And yet Berliners tell unblanched unfiltered stories about their history, whether it's the Hohenzollerns, the First World War, the Weimar era, the Nazi regime, or the Stasi and GDR [German Democratic Republic] and East Berlin and the wall. As someone said, it’s almost too much history! A lot of cities tend to try and cover up the unpleasant parts. For example, many cities in the United States and elsewhere struggle to talk about slavery and where their wealth came from. For cities in the UK, it can be a raging battle - Do you take down certain statues, or keep them up? Somehow Berlin, and the Berliners with their stubbornness, their unwille, are better able to tell many sides of their story in a way that for me, as an outsider, I really relish walking those streets and bumping into all those stories and hearing them.

Greg Clark 

Andrew, you've made a compelling case for three things for the next series and I can't argue with you. Firstly, we will have more cities from the global south. Thank you for that reminder. Secondly, I think we have to include Cape Town, and it will be very important to get the Cape Town story and to have you as one of the storytellers, please. Thirdly, I take the argument, this podcast needs Berlin, and we'll find a way to do that whether we can squeeze in Berlin in the next series or the one after I'm not sure, but I really take the point. Andrew, it's been great to speak to you, thank you so much for joining us.