Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 2019 | Page 39

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Figure 1. Statistical information about Wroclaw. The population is actually much higher
because in Poland many inhabitants do not register. The estimated number of unregistered
“Wroclawians” is about 100,000–200,000.
Wroclaw is a city with a genuinely Europe mixture of successively Polish, Czech,
Austrian, German, and then again Polish threads are interwoven during its
history of more than a thousand years. After World War Two, the city that was
physically damaged by 75% and whose entire population was replaced went through
a process of a complete redefinition of its identity. Today Wroclaw is truly European and
open. Milestones in the identity establishment process have included reconstruction
from physical war damage, Polish German reconciliation, the revolutionary emergence of
the Solidarity trade unions, the recovery of freedom, the establishment of locally elected
authorities, and Poland joining the European Union. This is history. Wroclaw’s chief
characteristics today are youth, dynamism, and openness. With a population of about
650,000, the city has more than 140,000 students, who are the main force shaping the
nature of the city, enforcing and bringing about change.
A city is a work of art, occupying the space in counterpoint to nature, the most expansive
phenomenon in the history of civilization. More and more people want to live in cities,
and ever more people will. This is a result of culture. Future cities may shape ecosystems
in accordance with the laws of nature. Culture may foster nature and cohabit with nature.
In Wroclaw’s Application for the title of European Capital of Culture 2016, we wrote:
It is a cliché that people will always be fonder of the colour of trees than
that of concrete. ... We deliberately want to inscribe the Green Wroclaw
programme into the agenda of citizen-driven development of our cultural
community. The point is to emphasise that issues like low emissions,
environmentally-friendly energy, or energy consumption involve more
than just taking a position in the dispute over whether climate change
is a reality or a phantasm. In fact, what is involved is the deeply human
desire to control, control oneself too.
During the 60 years of communism in Poland, we were losing time, and there was a
growing distance to countries that were able to develop in peace, taking advantage of
technological and scientific developments. That created a civilizational gap we had to
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