One important aspect of recent urban history in Europe has been the emergence of squats, which saw thousands of empty buildings become citadels of youth subcultures. Young people with little capital took over unused spaces — sometimes with political support — and transformed them into vibrant autonomous zones.
While the need for accommodation was a prime motive for many squatters, they also followed another impulse, a quest for spaces where rules could be rewritten and alternative lifestyles experimented with. Squats often doubled up as artist studios, community kitchens, underground bars and non-institutional social centres. They were affordable public venues, where students, migrants, marginalised people, party goers, and anyone else who so wished were welcome. These spaces played an important role in the expression and expansion of youth culture in Europe. Countless music bands, DJs, designers, makers and producers started their careers in squats, which were usually driven by an anti-establishment and anti-commercial ethos.
Creative industry rises
The social scene connected to those moments subsequently became fertile ground for the creative industry in cities like Berlin, Amsterdam and Barcelona. Many squats were formalised into cultural institutions, which are now actively supported by the state. Others became cooperative housing societies. Most were simply shut down, as real estate prices picked up, prompting the owners of squatted properties to call for evacuation. However, in the process the cities developed a strong tolerance for certain kinds of experimentation, notably in music, fashion, lifestyle, and sexual expression, which continues to give them a cultural edge and causes them to attract freedom-seeking people the world over — including an ever growing stream of Indian youth.
Vibrant world
Sometimes, the squats themselves contributed to regenerate neighbourhoods by increasing their cultural capital. As hipsters and other members of the so-called “creative class” moved in, prices went up, putting more pressure on the squats. A few European cities like Berlin went through a full circle of spontaneous appropriation and gentrification. Berlin used to be known as a “poor but sexy” cultural capital — not anymore. As it kept attracting creative people from all over the world, speculation and urban renewal slowly suffocated the experimental spaces that made it so fertile in the first place. Some European cities, which understood the value of preserving a vibrant alternative cultural scene, are now wondering how they can nurture and protect it. Subsidised spaces, cultural and art centres, temporary leases to specific groups, are some of the ways governments have been supporting emergent cultural scenes.
Dense Indian cities, where space is either heavily policed or male-dominated, do not offer much scope for alternative youth cultures to develop. Moreover, burdened by family responsibilities, working class youth are immediately pulled into cycles of livelihood and domesticity post teenage or even during childhood. Middle-class kids are absorbed into a snakes and ladder game of careers, which rarely give them space for personal expression. Urban youth are often part of local political outfits organising festivals and playing foot-soldiers for parties — but can rarely stake claims over space on their own terms.
Not so free
In short, there are very few spaces for young people across class, gender and other cultural firewalls to interact, experiment and express themselves as youth, and not as members of any traditional cultural community or caste. Metropolitan cities with their bars and clubs, are class-privileged enclaves, while college campuses — which come closest to a free space — are full of disciplinary guardians if not vicious and direct political attacks. It takes a trip to Goa, Shillong or abroad to experience the kind of freedom that youth in other parts of the world take for granted.
Yet, as is evident from Bollywood and social media, young India is as much a palimpsest of desires and fantasies as any place else. Imagine if our cities made a conscious effort — led by the youth themselves — to carve out non-commercial spaces where they could meet and interact freely, spaces where class and community got (at least temporarily) shelved in order to allow other forms of (sub) cultural expression to emerge? These spaces would feel like fresh air not only for the youth, but also the country as a whole. They could stimulate experimentation in many fields and act as incubators for the cultural sector, which has become so important for the economy.
The form of such spaces are yet to be imagined. They could be many things — cultural centres at the neighbourhood level, subsidised artists’ co-working spaces and residencies, large multidisciplinary institutions open to all... Sometimes, the best is simply to look for emerging forms of cultural expression and appropriation, and make sure that it gets the support it needs to grow. More than anything, what youth culture needs is not patronage, but more self-assertion — and if in the process a few rules are broken, then so be it.
The writers are co-founders of urbz.net, an urban network that’s active in Mumbai, Goa and beyond.