[This study of "of the political meaning of the city under global
urbanisation," writes reviewer Cator, is particularly timely "in light
of ongoing global housing struggles and a widespread surge in the cost
of living."]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

HOW CITIES CAN TRANSFORM DEMOCRACY  
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Charlotte Cator
September 26, 2023
LSE Review of Books
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_ This study of "of the political meaning of the city under global
urbanisation," writes reviewer Cator, is particularly timely "in light
of ongoing global housing struggles and a widespread surge in the cost
of living." _

,

 

_How Cities Can Transform Democracy_
Ross Beveridge and Philippe Koch
Polity Press
ISBN: 9781509545995

How are we to “take control of the places we live in, to act
collectively on the processes which shape our daily lives” in a time
where global forces of urbanisation have fundamentally challenged
spatial and political categories (148)? That is the question Beveridge
and Koch aim to answer in this generative, hopeful and well-written
book. Their investigation of the political meaning of the city under
global urbanisation could not have be more timely in light of ongoing
global housing struggles and a widespread surge in the cost of living.

 

Through an engagement with urban studies literature, radical democracy
theory and post-colonial theory, the authors conceptualise the
distinctly urban form of democracy that is enacted around the world
every day. They develop an understanding of the city (chapter 2) that
moves away from conventional ideas of the city as a category of
geographical analysis or a distinct physical form towards the city
“as a foundation for political imagination and action” (46).

To reimagine democracy and the city (chapter 3), Beveridge and Koch
bring radical-democratic theory, and especially Sheldon Wolin’s
political thought, in conversation with Engin Isin’s idea of the
city as both an actual place that provides the ground for democratic
practices and a virtual place – a democratic imaginary and project
of collective concern that is evoked through practices. This way, we
can understand the city as the key space for democratic publics to
come into being.

To show how these publics arise across the globe, the book presents
and connects a variety of urban movements, such as spontaneously
arising protests, urban cooperatives and various municipalist
initiatives, demonstrating key characteristics of urban democracy. Key
here is that urban democracy promotes a non-sovereign politics of
self-government and collective self-rule. This politics is spatial and
situated in the urban everyday – it is a process of recurring
attempts and aspirations that are never fully realised and always
contingent (chapter 4). In this process, democratic subjects are
shaped through their engagement in urban publics. Citizenship thereby
becomes something which is insurgent, practice-based and situated in
space (chapter 5).

Crucial for urban democracy is the complex but inevitable relation
with the state (chapter 6). The book argues that the project of the
city requires “a conceptual and normative disentangling of, first,
politics and, then, democracy from the state” (127). Importantly,
however, the state cannot be avoided. Drawing on Margaret Kohn’s
democracy/state nexus, the authors argue that although the democratic
and emancipatory potential of urban movements lies outside of the
state, the state is one of the most potent forces in (re)structuring
urban space and (re)distributing resources and can therefore not be
ignored altogether – “there can be no democracy outside of the
state” (128). Rather than a monolithic entity, this makes the state
a key site of struggle and opportunity that urban politics must
contend with.

Beveridge and Koch conceptualise the relation between urban politics
and the state through an elaboration of Simon Critchley’s concept of
“interstitial distance” (69). Through such a distance, the
unresolvable tensions between state and democracy can be embraced, and
the state de-centred, reducing it “to an enabler or partner at the
side of the demos” (125). A “future urban state” can thus take
shape, which would be an enmeshment of cooperative and collective
initiative driven by urbanites alongside the state that enables a
“localized urbanization” (134).

This book is a very welcome intervention into, and contribution to,
attempts to move “politics closer to people’s everyday lives”
(162) and to “democratize democracy” (52). It takes seriously the
myriad of urban activists around the globe who work hard and
continuously to democratise the city. It pushes back against
potentially totalising accounts of socio-spatial processes of
urbanisation and resituates political agency in the city, by drawing
attention to the spontaneous and everyday interactions that are so
crucial for ongoing struggles for democratisation.

However, although the book acknowledges the contention put forward in
planetary urbanisation literature that processes of urbanisation are
variegated and uneven, it runs the risk of not sufficiently thinking
through the implications of this for urban publics. The main tenet of
planetary urbanisation is to bring into view the relations between the
city and the geographies beyond it through infrastructures for
logistics and communications and extended supply chains for inputs and
waste streams. These relations have far-reaching consequences for
urban democratic publics.

By developing an account of urban democracy based on “bodies in
space, coming together” (101), the authors risk overlooking how
bodies in space are inherently related to bodies in distant spaces
through political-economic processes of urbanisation that span the
globe. The power of capital impacts not only the conditions for urban
publics to arise locally but ultimately mediates the relation between
different urban publics across the globe. Likewise, embracing the
thought that “we are all urbanites now” (156) might insufficiently
take seriously the divergences that are by now widespread, and most
extreme between urbanites in “hipster” cities on the one hand, and
people in deindustrialised and “left-behind” places on the other.
The question of how we can relate an urban public in one place to the
struggle of peasants over commons in another calls for closer
empirical engagement with such publics around the globe, and
especially in the Global South.

Such empirical engagement could also add to a better understanding of
the internal dynamics of urban publics over time, which is another
aspect that the book covers insufficiently. The spontaneous arising of
a public to reclaim urban space on the last Friday of every month (as
with the Critical Mass biking protests) or in response to impeding
eviction of two fellow urbanites (as with the example of Glasgow) is
one thing, but a community land trust that enables alternative forms
of urban living through continued and constructive engagement a whole
other.

Although the authors do acknowledge this throughout the book, a next
step is to think through more explicitly the different moments of
urban publics, of contestation and generation. If we are to understand
how urban democracy, with its “fugitive” character (55), might
pose a serious challenge to global capital and planetary urbanisation,
we need to further empirical engagement to gain a better understanding
of these different moments and the mechanisms around power and
equality inherent in them.

It is these important questions around the harnessing of the
democratic potential of the city that this book opens up for. The
fruitful combination of urban studies literature, radical democracy
theory, post-colonial theory and a wide array of examples make for an
engaging read. Activists, policy makers and academics alike may all
draw on this book to enact and promote urban democracy, and to further
understand how it can be sustained as a force in spite of global
urbanisation.

Charlotte Cator is a PhD fellow at the Department of Business
Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School. In her PhD project,
she studies how alternative forms of social, economic and political
organising in the city might contribute to more sustainable and just
economies and societies. LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/charlottecator
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_Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position
of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics
and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission
if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate
link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE
Review of Books._

* urban studies
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* The City
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* Globalization
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* Politics
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