Tossing a pancake in the face of the system

The people who broke into this abandoned outlet (the organisers of the campaign described the event as a "public bar opening") are not criminals. Their campaign has drawn people's attention to the problem of utilising empty premises that belong to the municipality. Service outlets, small shops and bars serving cheap meals have been steadily disappearing from the centre of Warsaw, often replaced by banks. The Prasowy milk bar was one such place. It was shut a few months ago (the person who ran it decided to close the business). All that was left was an empty outlet. And the ?what next' question
The organisers of the public bar opening are of the opinion that "its closing signifies the loss of yet another place that was used by Warsaw city residents of limited means". And they are right. After the closure of the bar, the municipality was planning to find another tenant via a tender procedure, with the winner being the one to agree to the highest rent. A small outlet in the city centre would certainly attract interested parties. However, would they be willing to continue its former operations? If the sole criterion for selecting the new tenant is the rent they are prepared to pay, then we can forget about it remaining a cheap food outlet. "Urban space in Warsaw is supposed to address the needs of all groups of inhabitants, including the less influential or affluent citizens. We do not want the centre to become an elite district," declares the prasowy.waw.pl website. It is hard not to agree with this reasoning. The municipal rent policy, which basically consists in gradually increasing rents, is doing more harm than good. Unfortunately, it seems that the city authorities are not willing to listen to their residents...
Meanwhile, across the pond, an interesting idea was being born in Washington DC at more or less the same time as the milk bar incident in Warsaw was taking place. A business idea has been conceived for the property market as a result of posing a simple question: what would you build in your city? This question was put to the inhabitants of Washington by Ben Miller, the co-founder of the popularise.com internet service. What is it all about? "The property market has been dominated by huge investment funds and corporations with billions of dollars at their disposal. However, when they invest in real estate they tend not to take into account the needs of local communities. The decision making process in these corporations is exclusively based on financial analyses - and this makes no sense in the long run," explains Ben Miller. So he has now set up a company that will listen to the views of local communities before investing, and it plans to use the internet for this purpose. The properties the company has at its disposal, which can be viewed on the popularise.com portal, are currently covered by huge banners with the words ?What would you build?' emblazoned on them. The local community then has the opportunity to vote for a number of ideas for their usage, and can also submit their own suggestions. Ultimately, it will be the citizens of Washington who decide on how each of the premises will be used. Will the idea turn out to be a success? Will it change the approach to investing? So far these remain open questions. Ben Miller is convinced, however, that the internet, which has completely transformed the media market, can do similar things for the property market.
Returning to Warsaw, has the public opening of the Prasowy bar succeeded? It would seem so. A discussion has been provoked in the media and some city councillors have now agreed for the need to hold a so-called ?profiled' tender. So there is a chance that Prasowy could be reborn.
But the question remains, what will happen to other local government-owned service outlets? Will it be necessary to illegally open more bars, flower shops and bakeries? Perhaps it would be worth adopting Ben Miller's idea and simply asking residents what they would build.