The city common and participatory democracy

The late Colin Ward – a tireless advocate for an anarchist social policy and theory, stated “… the city is the common property of its inhabitants. It is, in the economic sense, a public good”([27. Ward, C. (1989) Welcome Thinner City Bedford Square Press , London]). As a public good, the city can also be understood as a common – a complex social ecology that is governed by and for its citizens to maximise internal democracy, well-being and flourishing([28. See de Angelis, M. (2007) The Beginning of History Pluto , London; and Linebaugh, P. (2008) The Magna Carta Manifesto. Liberties and Commons for All Verso , London]).

The common is not a simple project of welfarism or nationalisation. As Hardt and Negri([29. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2009) Commonwealth Harvard University Press , Cambridge, MA]) point out, the political project of instituting the common ‘cuts diagonally across these false solutions—neither private nor public, neither capitalist nor socialist—and opens a new space for politics’. Building this kind of city common is part of the urban impossible. The city common does not just involve land and assets as common goods, but also its governance mechanisms. Policy and management options cannot be known or determined in advance of a commitment to participation. They emerge from this commitment.

The challenge, then, is to build momentum and capacity for participatory forms of direct democracy which enshrine the right of all to equally participate in building (im)possible urban futures([30. Bavo (ed) (2007) Urban Politics Now. Re-imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City, NAi Publishers, Amsterdam]). There is a huge difference between present representative democracies, which are no more than liberal oligarchies (rule by the few) where the state guarantees the reproduction of the existing social and economic order through its legal monopoly on violence, and more direct participatory democracies.

Building the latter needs a commitment to full and equal participation, which is a slow and difficult process. A variety of tools exist to make democracy more connected and accessible—citizen’s panels, neighbourhood assemblies, participatory budgeting and financial devolution to communities, consumer and producer councils, ordinances to limit the activities of corporations, media and news which is independent of corporate influence or advertising.

This is not just about giving the current system a make over. It is a radically different, people-centred, direct form of democracy, what Benjamin Barber([31. Barber, B. (1984) Strong Democracy. Participatory Politics for a New Age California Press , San Francisco]) called ‘strong democracy’ as opposed to the thin democracy we are all used to. Our yardstick becomes a process that has at its core the desire to empower the most marginalised citizens to determine and control their futures.

Urban policy and politics is largely directed through local strategic partnerships drawing on a narrow range of stakeholders and elites to manage urban affairs and develop options for the future. Local government myopism and the dead hand of bureaucracy has long been the enemy of such participatory-led transformation. But participatory democracy is not a top-down vision developed by strategic partners, or an anointed elite. It is a vision which is created through an open and conflictual process which puts at its heart, for better or for worse, the participation of every person on an equal basis. It rejects the paternalism of the urban great and the good, and instead rebalances power geometries so that all citizens have an equal say as experts in the unfolding story of their city.

A further point is who gets to participate if we regard cities as relatively unbounded entities created through webs of relations that reach far and wide. City dwellers have responsibilities not just to other dwellers of the same city, but to those whose lives they impact upon beyond the city limits. Participatory democracy, then, cannot be conceived through bounded space. It is at once local and extra-local. What this means in practice is part of the process.

This kind of commitment to an open and participatory democracy is both risky and uncomfortable. It can evoke fear, both from the political Left and the Right, who are used to framing and controlling what is possible and quashing creativity and autonomy in order to maintain power ([32. Duncombe, S. (2007) Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy New Press , London]).

The urge to create more inclusive and radical forms of direct democracy challenges vested interests, and can trigger often violent reactions. Different visions can collide, and when they effectively mobilise significant people and resources on different sides social conflict, tension and repression can ensue. This is exactly what happened in Oaxaca City in Mexico in late 2006 when the Oaxacan Popular People’s Assembly (APPO) took over large parts of the city in response to the oppression by the state governor, only to face a brutal backlash from the police and military. We mustn’t hide from these realities. Working to build a different city may not be an entirely peaceful path. It is also a slow process that requires much educational groundwork([33. Popular education is key here that starts from daily realities but also takes people on a journey of self-realisation and critical awakening; see Freire, P. (1979) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin, London]) as well as transparency towards the values that underpin it. Without a commitment to listening, tolerance, understanding and a protection of the most marginalised, participatory processes are seriously undermined. There also needs to be guarding against the emergence of new or invisible hierarchies.

Propositions would emerge from this process of co-production, aimed at maximising a feeling of individual agency amongst the most disempowered. Politicising would be focused upon maximising well-being and the flourishing of individuals to determine their own lives, while at the same time embedding forms of participatory democracy which have a deep connection to cherished values such as dignity, justice and respect. What would result from such a process is largely unknown given that there are virtually no examples of such participatory urbanism in action.

What is more certain is that they need to raise key issues of social justice and the deep class inequalities that shape our cities in terms of who is involved in governance, who has the right to participate, and who benefits from the allocations and functions of central urban space. Key issues that need to be further unravelled is who owns and controls land and assets, and how local, national and international capital and finance operate to shape cities. Who controls urban land and to what ends should be one of the key areas of urban inquiry in the coming decades. At its heart, then, the right to the city is the right to participate in its future creation. More than mere debates on the rights or wrongs of gentrification, we need a new vision of what a city could mean. Next time you go downtown look around and ask yourself: what impossible city do you see that doesn’t yet exist?