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What a Way to Run a Railroad: An Analysis of Radical Failure
How can the high failure rate of radical projects (in the media and elsewhere) be understood? This book analyses the reasons why many of the key organisations and projects in this sector, which grew up during the 1970's 'boom' in cultural politics, have either collapsed or moved into a state of permanent crisis. In attempting to come to terms with this 'history of failure' the key concepts of this movement - collectivity, internal democracy, participation - are critically re-examined, and an argument is presented as to how and why radical projects also need to redefine their priorities and take on board questions of efficiency, financial control and marketing if they are to survive.
101 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1985
41 people want to read
About the author
Charles Landry
42 books15 followersCharles Landry is an international authority on the use of imagination and creativity in urban change. He is currently a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. He invented the concept of the Creative City in the late 1980’s. Its focus is how cities can create the enabling conditions for people and organizations to think, plan and act with imagination to solve problems and develop opportunities. The notion has become a global movement and changed the way cities thought about their capabilities and resources.
Charles helps cities identify and make the most of their potential by triggering their inventiveness and thinking and by opening up new conversations about their future. His aim is to help cities become more resilient, self-sustaining and to punch above their weight.
Acting as a critical friend he works closely with decision makers and local leaders in the short and longer term.. He stimulates, facilitates and inspires so cities can transform for the better. He helps find apt and original solutions to seemingly intractable dilemmas, such as marrying, social creativity, innovation and tradition, or balancing wealth creation and social cohesiveness, or local distinctiveness and a global orientation. His overall aim is to help cities get onto the global radar screen.
Charles facilitates complex urban change and visioning processes and undertakes tailored research often creating his own projects. These include the Urban Psyche test developed with Chris Murray and the ‘Creative City Index’ in collaboration with Bilbao and developed with Jonathan Hyams. It is a strategic tool that measures, evaluates and assesses the innovative eco-system of a city and its capacity to adapt to radical global shifts and adjustments. So far 23 cities have taken part from Helsinki to Adelaide, Krakow toTaipei, Mannheim and Plymouth.
His latest major project is the picture driven ‘The Civic City in a Nomadic World’. It brings together his work over the last decade including the concept of ‘civic urbanity’, the ‘creative bureaucracy’ and ‘the management of fragility’. Publication date late 2017.
Charles was born in 1948 and studied in Britain, Germany and Italy. In 1978 he founded Comedia, a highly respected globally oriented advisor that assesses deep trends, creative potential, culture and urban change. He has completed several hundred assignments for many public and private interests and given key note addresses and workshops in 65 countries across the continents including: Britain, Australia, Germany, Finland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands, China, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, India, the UAE, Qatar, Albania, Croatia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, South Africa, Ecuador, Canada, the USA and Yemen.
His many books include most recently a series of short, illustrated books, including: The Creative Bureaucracy (September 2017), Psychology & the City with Chris Murray; The Digitized City; Cities of Ambition; The Fragile City & the Risk Nexus with Tom Burke; The Sensory Landscape of Cities; The Origins and Futures of the Creative City and Culture & Commerce. He is best known for The Creative City: A toolkit for Urban Innovators (2000); The Art of City Making (2006); and The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage with Phil Wood.
Charles helps cities identify and make the most of their potential by triggering their inventiveness and thinking and by opening up new conversations about their future. His aim is to help cities become more resilient, self-sustaining and to punch above their weight.
Acting as a critical friend he works closely with decision makers and local leaders in the short and longer term.. He stimulates, facilitates and inspires so cities can transform for the better. He helps find apt and original solutions to seemingly intractable dilemmas, such as marrying, social creativity, innovation and tradition, or balancing wealth creation and social cohesiveness, or local distinctiveness and a global orientation. His overall aim is to help cities get onto the global radar screen.
Charles facilitates complex urban change and visioning processes and undertakes tailored research often creating his own projects. These include the Urban Psyche test developed with Chris Murray and the ‘Creative City Index’ in collaboration with Bilbao and developed with Jonathan Hyams. It is a strategic tool that measures, evaluates and assesses the innovative eco-system of a city and its capacity to adapt to radical global shifts and adjustments. So far 23 cities have taken part from Helsinki to Adelaide, Krakow toTaipei, Mannheim and Plymouth.
His latest major project is the picture driven ‘The Civic City in a Nomadic World’. It brings together his work over the last decade including the concept of ‘civic urbanity’, the ‘creative bureaucracy’ and ‘the management of fragility’. Publication date late 2017.
Charles was born in 1948 and studied in Britain, Germany and Italy. In 1978 he founded Comedia, a highly respected globally oriented advisor that assesses deep trends, creative potential, culture and urban change. He has completed several hundred assignments for many public and private interests and given key note addresses and workshops in 65 countries across the continents including: Britain, Australia, Germany, Finland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands, China, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, India, the UAE, Qatar, Albania, Croatia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, South Africa, Ecuador, Canada, the USA and Yemen.
His many books include most recently a series of short, illustrated books, including: The Creative Bureaucracy (September 2017), Psychology & the City with Chris Murray; The Digitized City; Cities of Ambition; The Fragile City & the Risk Nexus with Tom Burke; The Sensory Landscape of Cities; The Origins and Futures of the Creative City and Culture & Commerce. He is best known for The Creative City: A toolkit for Urban Innovators (2000); The Art of City Making (2006); and The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage with Phil Wood.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 29, 2016
these kinds of books need to be written a lot more often.
the authors make the point that many radical projects, from alternative newspapers to babysitting groups and tenants unions, face tremendous obstacles in pursuing their objectives. but that this alone does not explain or excuse their high failure rate. the authors claim that organization, management, basic bookkeeping, and the material circumstances and backgrounds of the individual participants in a given radical project, are factors that radicals cannot simply wave away but must confront. basically, capitalism wants your little paper to fail, but if your paper does go belly-up its probably your fault as well, and there's no glory or usefulness in failing. its just a flat loss.
(this is, of course, assuming you're serious about your politics. the authors remark in passing that for petty-bourgeois radicals 'doing their time' in 'the community' or for 'the cause' the success or failure of an operation is secondary to its appearance on a CV to be presented to a grad school later. these guys are ruthless!)
the book deals with england in the early 80s so there are many predictions or historical references that are either irrelevant or inaccessible to me currently (the campaign of Tony Benn is casually referred to as if everyone reading the book had been following it, which in 1984 was probably accurate). but the authors provide more than enough specific evidence to make their argument clear even to an American. they devote one whole chapter to a blow-by-blow account of an alternative paper called The Leveller, from its initial fundraising success to eventual failure and collapse into debt. they remark that it failed to define its market, failed to take advertising seriously, failed to make minor concessions that would have allowed them much broader distribution, and failed to deal with differing skill levels and come up with a workable decision structure. following the specific examples is a critical discussion of bourgeois management science and leadership studies which leads the authors to argue against decentralized collectives and for a carefully managed form of authority, with clear roles, payment according to need (not strict equality or self-exploitation) and serious attention to accounting, marketing, and the compromises necessary in a media project to reach the largest possible number of people.
the book concludes with a chapter called 'the political economy of the future' where they argue for a war of position using an ever-expanding set of self-sufficient (even profitable) and well-managed worker co-ops, alternative media, non-traditional labor organizations and so on, conquering reformist labor unions or chunks of the state/labour party along the way. this is the weakest part of the book. partially because many of the things the authors take for granted- like a welfare state or strong unions - are no longer present. they seriously discuss the problem of making the NHS more democratic and accountable, for instance. this seems quaint in the current era when the existence of the NHS itself is being threatened. the authors do correctly point out the problem with merely 'distributive' politics though, and seem to recognize that the policies of thatcherism had already ruined the material basis of the squatting/benefits/free living collectives of the 70s, but didnt predict the extent to which socialism and the welfare state were to be dismantled in the coming years. they also understand the problems with co-ops (the two big examples they pick are Mondragon and Yugoslavia) but point to them as linchpins of their emerging democratic socialism without a serious discussion of their problems. this also seems quaint (to be fair we are talking about thirty years distance here!)
they also defend the market in a limited way. as someone who thinks the market is good for maybe figuring out what color of t shirt people like and nothing else, i still find this alarming even though it might not be that big of a deal.
anyway this is a great book, very honest and introspective. it doesnt seem like many of its ideas were influential though. maybe someone familiar with radical publishing in the uk could correct me on that.
the authors make the point that many radical projects, from alternative newspapers to babysitting groups and tenants unions, face tremendous obstacles in pursuing their objectives. but that this alone does not explain or excuse their high failure rate. the authors claim that organization, management, basic bookkeeping, and the material circumstances and backgrounds of the individual participants in a given radical project, are factors that radicals cannot simply wave away but must confront. basically, capitalism wants your little paper to fail, but if your paper does go belly-up its probably your fault as well, and there's no glory or usefulness in failing. its just a flat loss.
(this is, of course, assuming you're serious about your politics. the authors remark in passing that for petty-bourgeois radicals 'doing their time' in 'the community' or for 'the cause' the success or failure of an operation is secondary to its appearance on a CV to be presented to a grad school later. these guys are ruthless!)
the book deals with england in the early 80s so there are many predictions or historical references that are either irrelevant or inaccessible to me currently (the campaign of Tony Benn is casually referred to as if everyone reading the book had been following it, which in 1984 was probably accurate). but the authors provide more than enough specific evidence to make their argument clear even to an American. they devote one whole chapter to a blow-by-blow account of an alternative paper called The Leveller, from its initial fundraising success to eventual failure and collapse into debt. they remark that it failed to define its market, failed to take advertising seriously, failed to make minor concessions that would have allowed them much broader distribution, and failed to deal with differing skill levels and come up with a workable decision structure. following the specific examples is a critical discussion of bourgeois management science and leadership studies which leads the authors to argue against decentralized collectives and for a carefully managed form of authority, with clear roles, payment according to need (not strict equality or self-exploitation) and serious attention to accounting, marketing, and the compromises necessary in a media project to reach the largest possible number of people.
the book concludes with a chapter called 'the political economy of the future' where they argue for a war of position using an ever-expanding set of self-sufficient (even profitable) and well-managed worker co-ops, alternative media, non-traditional labor organizations and so on, conquering reformist labor unions or chunks of the state/labour party along the way. this is the weakest part of the book. partially because many of the things the authors take for granted- like a welfare state or strong unions - are no longer present. they seriously discuss the problem of making the NHS more democratic and accountable, for instance. this seems quaint in the current era when the existence of the NHS itself is being threatened. the authors do correctly point out the problem with merely 'distributive' politics though, and seem to recognize that the policies of thatcherism had already ruined the material basis of the squatting/benefits/free living collectives of the 70s, but didnt predict the extent to which socialism and the welfare state were to be dismantled in the coming years. they also understand the problems with co-ops (the two big examples they pick are Mondragon and Yugoslavia) but point to them as linchpins of their emerging democratic socialism without a serious discussion of their problems. this also seems quaint (to be fair we are talking about thirty years distance here!)
they also defend the market in a limited way. as someone who thinks the market is good for maybe figuring out what color of t shirt people like and nothing else, i still find this alarming even though it might not be that big of a deal.
anyway this is a great book, very honest and introspective. it doesnt seem like many of its ideas were influential though. maybe someone familiar with radical publishing in the uk could correct me on that.
February 4, 2021
This book did what is said on the cover. At the time of publication we were running a radical bookshop with loads of good intent and energy invested in it - but also loads of conflict and values ambiguity stuffed throughout. It was a Good Thing: an activity and support hub for interested people and we sold great books and a wide range of excellent periodicals.
WWRR identified the key (and very basic) issues about our culture and processes - it gave us a chance to reflect and reform and be much more useful to the community and city (and the "causes"!) and much less a pain in our own necks.
The issues we faced then are visible among so many good initiatves today so do read it if you can - its not long but it is rich!
WWRR identified the key (and very basic) issues about our culture and processes - it gave us a chance to reflect and reform and be much more useful to the community and city (and the "causes"!) and much less a pain in our own necks.
The issues we faced then are visible among so many good initiatves today so do read it if you can - its not long but it is rich!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews