Thoughts on the Municipal Livability Index Georgia
ISET-Policy Institute compared municipalities across Georgia. It's interesting to take a quick look.
In sending out this index, the ISET-Policy Institute itself writes that this was started under starkly different circumstances, and may make for odd reading now. At the same time, it's an interesting read, and can give you something to quibble about. It can also be a reminder how much the Georgian Dream failed to improve things in so many local contexts, where there just is a sense of dilapidation & neglect.
Of course you need to lock up decent people, if you can't actually solve any of the country’s substantive problems because of GD’s rampant incompetence and nepotism, especially on the regional level. (Some positive exceptions, too, with some signature museums in the regions, but they are few and far between.)
Back to the study. ISET-PI’s headline result is here:
Why is Poti up there? They found some positive aspects in local democracy.
Kazbegi? Great views, the tourists also bring some restaurants, there are quite a few shops. I would find the truck traffic a bit grating, plus the idea that it's hours and hours to get to Tbilisi. But there is an upside.
Within 20 minutes you are at the bottom of the Kobi ski lift and can whizz into a super ski resort without any queues, and having more than a quarter of the year of skiing at your doorstep, plus summers without airconditioning, that might have its merits. Also, the views never fail to stun.
Borjomi? I find that valley claustrophobic, only one step up from the high rises of Saburtalo. But you go down the list, and you remember that some people seem quite happy in Kutaisi -- streets in which kids can roam and play, some restaurants, you're out in nature in a heartbeat, and a decent & inexpensive airport next door. I also hear that some people rather enjoy Rustavi, and parts of it have really cleaned up, and there was an effort to make it a lot less drab. Then there is the great Rustavi forest, here a wonderful write-up by Anna Edgar at OC-Media.
If the repression of the Georgian Dream had any poetic creativity, they would push people into internal exile rather than outright deporting them to force them abroad. You'd be told that you cannot stay in Tbilisi longer than one night, but can live anywhere else in Georgia. Sure, that would still be manifestly unjust but it would make for some interesting conversations. Might some relocate to Tsalka? Or revive the Dukhabor villages? Offer Pumpkin Lattes in Ozurgeti? For a moment you weigh these options and then remember the dozens of political prisoners in jail right now, many of them young people whose lives are on hold for protesting for freedom, and the frivolousness of any such reveries comes back like a boomerang.
There is anyway a serious political dimension. Should opposition parties contest the local elections? My view is that they absolutely should, pricing in that it will be unfair and rigged. But one needs to hammer home, relentlessly, how all the local failures, the dereliction and neglect, are connected to a larger failure of governance — and that it does not have to be that way. One of the worst aspects of the Georgian Dream is that it has taken the hope of improvement away. That becomes incredibly visible at the local level, and even in adverse global circumstances, that should to be talked about, every day, every hour, and every minute. Considering livability is one dimension of that.
One does hope that ISET-PI will make all the disaggregated data available too, as some of that would make for interesting comparisons.
Here, for a moment of distraction, the full report.