Cities of which everyone is a creditor

City management is neither merely a series of practices in which scientific and technical methods are used in the best way to reach perfect geometric shapes, nor, in addition, merely a performance in which the water, food, transport and cleaning needs of the city's inhabitants are met by a perfect mechanical organization. What is essential is the good and just management of the differences the city contains.

Seen from this angle, the condition of today's cities can of course be subject to different classifications and assessments. First of all, when we recall the debt that urbanity contains, we see that the subject is not limited to "management" alone. A city by nature is a complex network of relations, and a big city is a social structure formed by a hopelessly tangled network of relations.

Within this network, the quality of the governed is as important as that of those who govern. Problems such as the vertical structures we complain about so much, luxurious spaces with no people in them, the decline of neighborly relations, and the formation of sterile gated communities are not problems produced only by those who govern; they are a problem related to a tragic development of our human condition.

A telos that the famous German philosopher Martin Heidegger attributed to the nature of technology, a process which humanity too completes simply by doing its part within it, is slowly dragging the whole world toward an apocalypse. Within this contemporary existence that he depicted from a very pessimistic point of view, Heidegger got out of the matter by saying "only a God can save us."

In fact he had not got out. When the world is depicted this way, it was possible to take things as far as a fatalism that leaves no responsibility to the human being, or even an ethical licentiousness.

All the negativities complained about with regard to the city are, to a large extent, a result of people's forgetting, neglecting or denying their debts to the city, to other people, or to others. Forgetting, neglect or denial, each a different level of irresponsibility, instead of making the city for us the blessing of being one body with other people, makes it the channel of our being dragged toward an apocalypse that we are not even aware of.

We had said that within the division of labor that city life imposes by itself, no one is exempt from debt. That is why, for example, our civil society organizations, our opinion leaders, our religious communities, our professional groups cannot slip out of the matter by placing the negativities experienced in our cities on a single segment or a single administrator.

Do they sufficiently think about what responsibility they must bear in the division of labor inherent in the nature of the city? If they do not think, it means they do not know their debts either. In a society that does not know, does not recognize, denies its debts, nothing can be accounted for properly.

We have seen many an opinion leader rush to create a fait accompli, by placing a mosque on public land, for zoning changes he wants to make in the interest of his own community. Those who reach the point of thinking they owe no debt to other people, to the public, with an approach of thinking they are doing good deeds in their own way, grading themselves, evaluating themselves, are also an organ of the social body that forms the city.

Society is like a body. When one organ aches, the rest of the body feels all this pain. But what happens, how is the integrity of the body felt, or what does that body feel, when one organ of the body acts in a way that harms and pains the other organs?

Our civility began with recognizing the debt that urbanity imposes on us and resolving to pay this debt. Just as it is not permissible for those who do not know and do not recognize this debt to undertake the management of the city, it is also a separate truth that managing a society made up of those who do not feel this debt is an entirely different test.

After all, let us take a look at what we expect from the people we elect to govern us. How many people are there who continue to live in this body without demanding a privilege for themselves? In what proportion are there people in our cities who do not see or feel themselves as privileged over other people, whether on an individual basis or on the basis of a community or a religious group?

Aren't our cities full of those who, when it comes to talk, want the rules to be applied to everyone, but when the matter comes to themselves think they have a reason to use a privilege? Everyone, or every community, every association, every group, every clan or tribe in this society sees itself, let alone as indebted, even as a creditor.

The city is a place where everyone is indebted to everyone else. City quality begins where this indebtedness becomes a consciousness. That is why observing the courtesy and protocols shown to others in the city, even if you do not know them at all, is the first and simplest installment of this debt.

People's feeling their indebtedness also increases the feeling of gratitude. This city life, which is possible together with the existence of other people, increases a person's gratitude. Gratitude to the Creator begins with thanking the created. One who does not know how to thank the servant to whom he is indebted cannot express his gratitude to the Creator either. Indeed, a person who does not even see his indebtedness in the city can hardly see that he is indebted to the Creator. That is why our cities are filling up with people who neither give thanks nor express gratitude.

Of course, what is worse is that those who do not see themselves as indebted constantly see themselves as creditors. Creditors of everyone, and therefore extremely aggressive, angry and disrespectful in collecting this credit. Whoever administers cities full of people with these feelings, no better result emerges.