Representing London: making and claiming the city

Abstract

What does it mean to represent a city? We examine this question through drawing from and seeking to read across two somewhat distinct meanings of representation, stemming from cultural theory and political studies. The reason for approaching representation in this way is an interest in how elected representatives claim the city. Based on interviews with members of the London Assembly, we take a transversal cut across party and geographical lines to analyse the nature and content of their representative claims, identifying two main types: the city as an identity and as a place or a collection of places. The politicians invoke cultural and institutional dimensions of representation and representativeness. The usefulness of employing both senses of representation is that through its representatives, the city—and urban democratic representation—is more than a discrete object or even a multiplicity of viewpoints, but rather a process continually made and remade through practices and claims, even as these slide across scales. These repertoires of representation, of the city as is and as it could be, signal how even from a place of seeming political marginality, the city is open to multiple imagined ideals that are shared and cut across conventional political lines.