The Good; The Municipal

The base unit of Vekllei society are municipalities, called municipolis in their language. They occupy a uniquely intimate presence in Vekllei life as an unusual body of public affairs. Unlike other state bodies in Vekllei, which function similar to their overseas counterparts, local municipalities supersede their conventional definition as mere ’local governments’ and are considerably more essential to the wellbeing of Vekllei communities.

In Vekllei, the word municipolis refers to

• Local government (the ‘municipality’), as made up of assemblies, trade unions, civic organisations, chapels, and school children
• The general legal authority of the municipality, including its petty legislature and local police
• Features of the community that are owned by the community, like sewers, libraries, trams and public workshops
• The municipal attitude of civil service and well-meaning bureaucracy
• The municipal principles of localism, egalitarianism and democracy¹
• The style and design language of community features (municipalist design; civic newda; socialist tectonicism)
• The architecture of the national and commonwealth state as it manifests locally, like local branch offices of government companies and ministerial offices
• Any sort of construction involving municipal agents or the Army Construction House (ACS)²
• All land and housing that is responsible to an agent of the Vekllei Delicture system³

The ‘municipal’ in Vekllei are spaces that are both local and public. It is not just a phrase that refers to the machinery of local government, but in fact a descriptor for all aspects of the spirit of localism as an extension of Vekllei’s indigenous social anarchism. Like a lot of political concepts in Vekllei, its origins are cultural and emotional rather than legal – the ‘municipalities’ of Vekllei are vessels of all goodwill afforded to community services, from schools to general practitioners. They are fundamentally ‘sun-facing’⁴ and optimistic.

A ‘municipality’ describes a Vekllei community at any scale, as well as all of its social features – governance, law-making, design, civil services, infrastructure, and so on. It implies smallness and neighbourliness, but also scales up to borough-sized administrative divisions (called ‘borough municipalities’), and, to some extent, the city-state of Vekllei itself. The same principles found in the atomic communities of society grow, like trees, into every level of government and inform the Vekllei national identity. The health of the utopianism of the Floral Period is diagnosed in its communities, not its governments.