One of the more sinister aspects of Henryk Gaertner's company, G D & K Developments operations operations and the form of unaccountable crony capitalism it represents is the wider similarities it has with what Naomi Klein terms "the shock doctrine", whereby crises and areas of neglect and collapse are used to impose fast track investments without public consultation.
The manner in which the Rada Miesjka has foisted so many development plans on Krakow in partnership with Gaertner is an example of what Gaertner terms "exemplary realisation" whereby his firm is given a free reign to transform what are considered areas with no value into highly lucrative profits without bothering or caring for the rule of law.
In Gaertner's schemes the UNESCO Convention counts for nothing despite it being blatantly quite plain that there is a legal and moral duty of the Polish state in general and the Krakow Rada Miejska in general that this is the case, though the laws are ill defined enough for Gaertner to exploit with the full backing of the Rada.
Polish Constitution, Article 5:
'The national government shall... safeguard the national heritage and shall ensure the protection of the natural environment pursuant to the principles of sustainable development.'
UNESCO World Heritage Convention: Article 4:
'Each State Party to this Convention recognizes that the duty of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage...
i.e.: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature ... groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science.'
The Treimorfa Tower lies outside the UNESCO zone but it still will make an "imposing" impact of the cityscape viewed from the UNESCO zone. This is presumably why , apart from financial consideration with the speculative property crash of 2008 this project has not been "realised"-yet.
The "shock doctrine" is well applicable to Gaertner with his global linkages with financiers abroad and the way his operation are in the honoured tradition of demanding openess in the economy for his own investments, getting the permission from the pliable Rada and imposing his will on the city with a building set as Treimorfa Tower.
With his linkages he can, in the wake of the 2008 property crisis and slump, offer investors guaranteed returns that can be repatriated abroad as he has also a line in financial advice business, which includes depositing investors money in places known for their fiscal transprency such as Monico and Luxembourg.
Gaertner exemplifies the new irresponsible face of arrogant 'disaster capitalism' created by Balcerowicz and Sach's neoliberal "reforms" whereby medical analogies of emergency surgery where applied to restoring the health of the decayed organism by rushing through measures purported to be saving the economy but, in reality, hollowing out politics and democracy.
The Treimorfa Tower exemplifies that as the Gierek era folly which is the Skeleton Tower built but never completed with debts accrued from Western banks in order to finance prestige grand projects that Gaertner wants to now "realise" through a system that remains as unaccountable aspects going back to the Communist period.
The Treimorfa Tower is not "Rising from the Ruins". It is adding to the ruination of the cityscape, so the article contains what the writer Steven Poole terms Unspeak, the insinuation of an underslying meaning packed into a soundbite.
For it is important to remember that Gaertner is not only a specialist in law who graduated from Jagiellonian University but who also from the medical faculty as well, so that he aims to operate on Krakow with surgical precision in slicing and dissecting old Krakow to make it conform with his own deranged conception of architecture.
As with the immediate post-communist period where Polish national assets were picked clean by greedy inside dealing by ex-Communists and wholesale privatisation, now this process in recent years has been applied to the appropriation of land. On his Facebook Page, Gaertner revealed he was a great supporter of George Soros who financed the asset stripping process in Poland and Russia.
That was never consented to by those who had supported Solidarity in the 1980s and reflected the idea that Market Leninist ideals of neoliberal ideologues that the worse the economy got in the immediate aftermath of overnight price liberation and the removal of subsidies for state owned industries the better it would be the remould the Polish economy for the super rich.
Since 1990 this new class of rapacious venture capitalists have repeatedly dominated and corrupted the democratic process and Gaertner, who was 18 at the time, now represents the worldview of those like Soros, Sachs and Balcerowicz who believed that disorientating radical change offered a way of capitalising on confusion and public lack of awareness to reap megabucks
Gaertner is the epitomy of the Balcerowicz ideology of the "chicago Boys", the Goodfellas, where policies antithetical to the needs and wants of the ordinary citizen are rammed through by measures known as "extraordinary politics" whereby crony capitalists and investors from elsewhere, especially the USA but in subsequent years EU nations too, could get without consulting the people.
Balcerowicz's doctrine was the one tried and tested in Latin America both under Chile, where Pinochet eliminated any opposition to the "liberalisation of the economy" into US investors hands and in Bolivia where trade unionists and democratic opponents were 'disappeared' shot, and tortured.
Whilst Latin American norms could not apply to Poland, the idea citizens should be able to challenge these ideas are anathema to the new ruling elites that then emerged out of Solidarity's right wing in PiS, which controls the Rada Meijska in Krakow, and imposed top down decisions as surgical strikes that appear rapidly before opposition has any time to crystallise.
The arbitrary manner in which Bujakowski, the vice President and the Mayor of Krakow all share the vision of politics as genuflecting to the need for "exemplary realisations" is shown in the closed committee decision making process whereby the Treimorfa deal was sealed without calling in any other independent civil society groups.
The attempt to destroy history and realise a new model Utopia in architecture that buries the past and Krakow amidst starchitectural junk is the visual embodiment of Balcerowicz's neoliberal creed in physical operation, where the city is treated as one vast theatre for rupturing and diconnecting Krakow's citizens from their past and commodifying everything wholly for profits.
Balcerowicz's Plan was spelt out thus,
"Extraordinary politics by definition is a period of very clear discontinuity in in a country's history. It could be a period of very deep economic crisis, of a breakdown in the previous institutional system, or of a liberation from external intervention ( or end of war ). In Poland, all three phenomena converged in 1989".
What Balcerowicz did to the national economy, the cross party consensus is now attempting to operate at the local level by micromanaging change in Krakow by applying what Balcerowicz termed "a radical acceleration of of the legislative process" to impose a big bang package of measures that will be imposed as a fait accompli.
Yet no investigative journalist has probed the nature of the arbitrary manner in which the Treimorfa Tower has been imposed. In a craven article in the English language newspaper The Krakow Post a year ago in February 2009, it was revealed that the absurd Janczykowski deigned to decide that the limit of the new Rockefeller Centre would be 102.5 metres
In Krakow this is what is known as official "conservation" and the newspaper made no attempt to challenge or probe into the arbitrary manner in which the building has been imposed ot why, despite fearing UNESCO, the Rada has submitted a "buffer zone" banning Krakow from being ringed by skyscrapers with this one "exception".
As the Krakow Post reported
Peter Bradley mentioned the building's visibility on Krakow's skyline as part of the motivation: "TreiMorfa is a unique project. It's unlikely that anything else will be built so high so close to the centre of Krakow." No matter which concept ends up becoming the final project, it's safe to say that within the next few years, Krakow's skyline will certainly see an improvement.
Why the Krakow Post sees Treimorfa as an "improvement" is only relative to the eyesore that is there now, an architectural blight for which no exceptions should be made other than its impending demolition and the replacement of low level business blocks, though even here the capacity of Verity Developments or G D & K to erect total steel plate and glass kitsch would be unrivalled.
The only "improvement" in Krakow's skylone lies in the removal of the "Skeleton" and a public enquiry into the reason why exceptions or extraordinary measures apply to this site but not to others and where the legal guarantees are that no more tower blocks will either be proposed or planned on a permanent basis.
The job of newspapers is not to act as messengers of the powerful, simply through a money grubbing desire for corporate sponsorship, but to investigate and challenge the hidden agendas, scrutinise with forensic precision the unspoken assumptions and caveats of the language used by those like Gaertner and Bradley who only opines it is "unlikely" that another tower will be built.
That does not mean another skyscraper will definitely NOT be built. Given the way this deal was stitched up in an undemocratic way, there is no reason to trust those like Gaertner whose interests lie with pleasing his investors on the WSE and not the citizens of Krakow.
There is the an imperative needs for the Rada to publish the minutes of the meeting. Who said what, to whom and when. In Britain , this is known as accountable democracy and essential with a building that Symon Duda oafishly brags will be a "new Rockefeller Centre".
So come on, is the RADA prepared to reveal the minutes as in any open society they are obliged to. Or has it been conveniently put down the Orwellian memory hole and that the public need only be told what the media decide are the key quotes.
GDK boast it will be higher than the St Mary's Tower, What a great contribution to Krakow's culture these philistines are making
Tell that to the citizens of Krakow. A public petition against this repellent edifice will be mounted in Spring 2010, and the Rada is obliged to be open about its dealings. Investigative journalists need to be brought in to examine with forensic precision the language used and the obfuscating marketspeak used to sell this project. |
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