City Politics Research Articles

Gendered violence, frontline workers, and intersections of space, care and agency in Dharavi, India

The resilience and activism of marginalised urban populations have played an important role in imagining urban politics in Indian cities. Similarly, the issue of sexual violence against women in public spaces became a significant part of urban politics in the aftermath of the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case. However, subsequent activism and research have paid lesser attention to other pervasive experiences of intimate violence and structural inequalities that confront marginalised urban populations, particularly poor women and children. Drawing on participatory ethnographic research with frontline workers engaged in an NGO’s violence prevention program in Dharavi, Mumbai, this paper re-inscribes ‘gender’ and ‘violence’ as experiential concepts into the urban framework. I use the term ‘intersection’ as a heuristic device to examine how frontline workers come to understand gender as a relationship of inequality that produces conditions of violence. I term this intersection ‘gender/violence’. The second intersection, ‘frontline’, further underscores how negotiations of the public–private divide in urban spaces, women’s caring labour in supporting survivors of violence and the resultant forms of gendered agency are interconnected. I argue that such a holistic understanding of women’s everyday actions of resisting and negotiating structural and gendered violence contributes to recent urban scholarship on gender and violence and furthers our understandings of agency, solidarity and resilience.

Communities of struggle: the making of a protest movement around housing, migration and racism beyond identity politics in Berlin

ABSTRACT After the initial moments of political protest have passed, urban protest movements and neighbourhood initiatives often face the challenge of establishing a sustainable organizing structure in their neighbourhoods and of creating long-lasting collaborations, including maintaining relations among various participants and heterogeneous political actors in the city. This paper analyses the political practice of Kotti & Co, an urban neighbourhood initiative that has been active in political struggles pertaining to social housing and displacement and working against racism and neoliberal urban politics in the super-diverse city of Berlin. In the larger context of urban protest movements since 2011, the initiative managed to overcome a series of political challenges and to build a long-lasting organizing practice. The authors identify Kotti & Co as a ‘community of struggle’ that was able to foster a lasting movement through three elements of sustainability. The protest first managed to build bridges across and beyond its members’ differences (class, migration background, sexual orientation) by finding a common set of political demands and social practices as well as by establishing collective place-based subjectivities. These place-based subjectivities have contributed to overcoming conventional identity politics by forming a new kind of political identity through the struggle itself.

San Francisco's New Deal Murals in Long-Term Perspective

The federal art programs of the New Deal produced public art in quantities not seen before or since. Historians have studied many aspects of the New Deal's art programs, but few have considered the long-term history of works produced by them. New Deal art programs produced large numbers of public murals—so many that such murals are often thought of as the typical form of New Deal art. They thus provide readily available examples of the long-term experience of New Deal art. San Francisco has a particularly rich collection of these murals. Some of them have been well cared for over the past eight decades, but public officials have proved negligent stewards—and occasionally destructive stewards—of others. Some of San Francisco's murals were considered so controversial at the time they were created that they were modified or even destroyed. Others became controversial later, with calls for modification or destruction. Some of the latter were covered, some were vandalized, and some have deteriorated. Most of the damaged murals have been restored, sometimes more than once. This article looks at the city's New Deal murals at Coit Tower, the Mothers Building at the Zoo, the Beach Chalet, the University of California San Francisco, the Alemany Health Center, Treasure Island/City College, and Rincon Annex/Center, with special attention to the George Washington High School murals that have recently been highly controversial. Controversies over the murals at Coit Tower, Rincon Annex, and George Washington High School also reveal significant changes in the role of the city's political and civic leadership with regard to public art.

Civic Ecologism: Environmental Politics in Cities

ABSTRACT This paper accepts Ecologism’s basic argument that sustainable existence implies radical change in our relationship with the nonhuman world and in our social and political lives, and seeks to ascertain what ecologism implies for the city. The social and political aspects involved in transitioning a city to sustainable patterns are analyzed by scrutinizing three facets of the relationship between cities and the natural environment. The paper concludes with an analysis of the political and normative implications of these relations and argues that transitioning cities into sustainable patterns requires a more profound civic politics of urban sustainability.

Legacy Cities: Continuity and Change Amid Decline and Revival ed. by J. Rosie Tighe and Stephanie Ryberg-Webster

Reviewed by: Legacy Cities: Continuity and Change Amid Decline and Revival ed. by J. Rosie Tighe and Stephanie Ryberg-Webster Henry Himes Legacy Cities: Continuity and Change Amid Decline and Revival. Edited by J. Rosie Tighe and Stephanie Ryberg-Webster. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. 240 pp. Hardcover $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8229-4563-5.) Coming out of the global catastrophe of World War II, the United States stood alone as the world's preeminent economic power. The postwar world witnessed strong economic growth and the emergence of an expanding middle class promoted by the strength and size of the US labor movement along with Keynesian demand side economic policies. The period from roughly 1946 to the mid 1970s, also known as the "Affluent Era," unfortunately did not last forever. By the mid- to late- 1970s, the country witnessed the emergence of neoliberalism, a stagnating economy, the decline of labor, and the phenomenon of deindustrialization and globalization, all of which negatively impacted once sizable and vibrant industrial cities such as St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland. From the mid-1970s to the present, these urban industrial powerhouses witnessed significant economic, social, political, and cultural decline as both industry and people abandoned the city. In its wake came the Rust Belt, and what many scholars today call "Legacy Cities." J. Rosie Tighe and Stephanie Ryberg-Webster's edited compilation Legacy Cities: Continuity and Change Amid Decline and Revival focuses on analyzing various aspects and phenomenon of legacy cities such as the impact of urban decline, urban planning and policy, and possible paths forward that could help legacy cities stabilize their populations, promote diversity and equity, and spur economic growth. The authors note, "the term legacy evokes these cities' positive heritage and assets as well as their continuing burdens and challenges." (3) The book is an edited compilation of essays from a host of academics of various backgrounds and disciplines. The totality of the book focuses on the past, present, and future of legacy cities. The book is subdivided into three sections. Section one, "US Legacy Cities: Conditions and Prospects," is the broadest in scope of all the sections as it does not focus on any one legacy city, but instead focuses on analyzing key legacy city issues. The various authors in this section tackle important topics, such as legacy city politics with an emphasis on jurisdictional fragmentation as well as the impact of population decline on city resources, economic decline and the loss of tax revenue, the built environment, and housing decline and decay. Section one ultimately exposes the reader to the myriad issues faced by all legacy cities, while sections two and three turn inward and focus specifically on legacy city issues [End Page 118] associated with Cleveland, Ohio. The essays in section two focus on decline in Cleveland and tackle such topics as racial segregation, neighborhood-level economic decline, and regional housing issues. Section three also focuses on Cleveland; however, emphasizing various policies that can help stem the tide of economic decline and help to revitalize the city. The essays in section three focus on the built environment, the promotion of legacy city art and cultural institutions, mitigating industrial environmental issues, and mitigating regional political fragmentation. Throughout the entire book, the authors emphasize the need for "equitable planning" and a "holistic" approach to problem-solving. (247) In addition, the authors suggest the book is designed to provide, "a better understanding of the conditions of decline, the prospects for mitigating decline, and the possibilities for the future." (246) Indeed, with this work, the authors do just that. Ultimately, Legacy Cities: Continuity and Change Amid Decline and Revival is chock-full of valuable history, analysis, policy, and insights pertaining to legacy cities that is accessible and useful to both the novice and academic reader. Henry Himes Youngstown State University Copyright © 2020 The Kent State University Press

Accounting and smart cities: New evidence for governmentality and politics

The concept of a smart city has attracted the attention of many scholars and policymakers in many countries worldwide. The role of accounting as a tool of governance in smart city politics, however, has so far been largely overlooked, especially in less developed countries (LDCs). This paper sets off to fill this research gap and hitherto unexplored linkages between accounting and smart cities. Drawing on the concept of governmentality, the authors conducted a case study based on document analysis, meetings observation, and 42 semi-structured interviews at a branch of a hybrid electricity company owned by New Cairo City in Egypt, during 2018. Findings show that the case company has implemented smart distribution networks of electricity in which new management accounting technology (enterprise resource planning (ERP) system) is used to trace costs, revenues, client complaints and feedback in a timely manner. The new network (of infrastructure and technologies) has represented timely accounting information as a major political power to influence accurate governance decision-making, such as smart electricity pricing and control, and to challenge governance decisions that are not sound. This paper is one of the first studies to explore the socio-political dynamics of accounting in smart city governance in the context of LDCs.

Sanctuary Cities and Republican Liberty

What are sanctuary cities? What are the political stakes? The literature provides inadequate answers. Liberal migration theorists offer few insights into sanctuary city politics. Critical migration scholars primarily address the relationship between sanctuary cities and political activism, a small part of the phenomenon. The historical literature examines continuities between 1970s sanctuary church activism and contemporary sanctuary cities, confusing what is essential to sanctuary churches and what is only sometimes associated with sanctuary cities. Together these approaches obscure more than they reveal. This article suggests a republican account of sanctuary cities. Reconstructing American migration politics from the colonial era onward shows that sanctuary cities have roots in both the colonial republican revolt and the republican principle of freedom as nondomination. That reconstruction reveals much about both sanctuary cities and the federal government’s long-running assault on them. The resulting robust analytical framework clarifies what is at stake in the politics of sanctuary cities: federal sovereignty in migration politics specifically and republican liberty in migration politics generally.

Infrastructural Discontent in the Sanitary City: Waste, Revolt, and Repression in Cairo

AbstractIn this article, I examine the relationship between waste, revolt, and repression in Cairo's sanitation system from the early 20th century to the present. I coin the term infrastructural discontent in the sanitary city to describe how discontent slowly accretes around Cairo's sanitation system and becomes a powerful force in the city's politics—a force that can be mobilised for popular revolt and state repression. I detail three expressions of infrastructural discontent in Cairo's sanitation system, paying careful attention to the deeply related mundane and spectacular productions of these expressions. Tracing the formation of infrastructural discontent in the sanitary city, I show how resistance and repression are produced and contested in material infrastructural relations which contain the accretions of long‐standing struggles over colonialism, development, and uneven urbanisation.

“Ethical capitalism” in the city: Embedded economy or marketization? The case of social impact bonds

ABSTRACT This paper offers a cultural political economy approach to efforts to advance the “social investment market” as a specific crisis management strategy in response to the economic crisis of 2008. Analyzing social impact bonds (SIBs), it looks at efforts to combine market mechanisms with new notions of public responsibility, and structures of accountability often described as “ethical capitalism” today. Three central claims are interrogated, both as forms of framing and resolving the crisis. First, the paper is concerned with SIBs’ approach to socio-economic polarization through the development of preventative services focused on creating “social impact.” Second, it focuses on their efforts to avoid exacerbating the state’s fiscal crisis by allowing for private investment in public services. Third, the analysis shows how SIBs intend to counter the economic problem of slow and uneven growth with its idea of creating “shared value” between society and investors. The text is based on empirical case research into two of the world’s first two SIBs, seeking to reduce prisoner re-incarceration in New York City and Peterborough, UK. It analyzes policy papers and 30 interviews conducted with policy actors, to reconstruct the SIB as an asymmetrical, contradictory, and provisional compromise between actors holding divergent policy agendas. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s concept of “progressive neoliberalism,” it shows how SIBs combine notions of public responsibility with market-based structures of a profit-oriented economy, thereby limiting the effort to re-embed the economy in society. Connecting empirical research to theory, it describes a complex process of negotiation on the conflicted terrain of city politics, between efforts to extend market governance on the one hand, and those initiatives seeking to overcome it, on the other.

New York 2140, Back to the Future

An extended consideration of Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 (2017). The story is a heist plot engineered by residents of the Met Life Building in the year 2140, when the seas had risen 50 feet. Topics: Fiction and reality, patterns, transportation infrastructure, formal order encompassing narrative chaos, politics, from the micro politics the Met Life Tower, to New York City politics, and beyond that to the nation and the world financial system. Includes photographs of the current New York skyline in which you can see the Met Life Building as it currently exists.

Participation and Representation of Women in Politics in South Tangerang City (Study at the DPRD of South Tangerang City)

Women's representation in politics, especially those who sit as members of the legislature. From the last few elections, the number of women's representation in the legislature in the city of South Tangerang is still minimal, even below the minimum threshold of 30 percent. This shows that the participation of women in the political arena in South Tangerang is still a minority. This study tries to provide an overview of the participation and representation of politics in South Tangerang City. This study used a qualitative approach by conducting direct observation through interviews and gathering information from other sources. The problems that occurred in women's representation in the DPRD of South Tangerang City could be identified. The results showed that women's representation from two elections in the city of South Tangerang was still below the threshold for women's representation, namely still 14.58 in the 2009 election and 17.78% in the 2014 election, where the threshold for women's representation set by law - the invitations are 30%. The lack of women's participation in politics in the city of South Tangerang, especially as members of the DPRD, is due to the strong gender discrimination and patriarchal culture in Indonesia.

Experimenting with the urban: Politics, discourses and practices of the smart city and datification

In recent years the concept of smart city has been prominently featuring in urban discourses and practices. Indeed, it has become a label many metropolis desire for themselves. Smart urbanism is based on the premise that cities can become more efficient and sustainable through the application of technological solutions. However, what are the scenarios and socio-technical consequences that can be associated with augmentation of smart devices and algorithms within the city? This article addresses some of the contemporary debates and analytical challenges that emerge from the notion of smart cities. Taking interpretative keys from Science and Technology Studies (STS), this paper analyzes the experimental nature of the concept of smart cities and the effects of datafication over urban spaces and individuals. Using Strenger’s figure of the idiot, this article concludes with a critical reflection on the vision of city that the smart city paradigm contains.

In search of the Smart Citizen: Republican and cybernetic citizenship in the smart city

The smart city has been both celebrated for opening up decision-making processes through responsive digital infrastructures, and criticised for turning citizens into mere nodes of socio-technical networks under corporate or government control. In line with these depictions, smart city politics is often analysed as a struggle between aspirations for bottom-up participatory democracy and authoritarian control. Drawing on ethnographic research on an Amsterdam project which encourages citizens to collect and share air quality data, we problematise this vertical reading of smart city politics. The project mobilises both republican citizenship and cybernetic citizenship, each assuming different logics regarding the ways in which citizens negotiate urban life by means of data and sensing technologies. While republican citizenship emphasises citizens’ sovereignty, cybernetic citizenship emphasises their immersion into informational environments. We demonstrate how, depending on specific situated interests and forms of engagement, both kinds of citizenship feed into appealing visions of urban life for different actors.

Manuel Nájera’s De Lingua Othomitorum Dissertatio: decolonising the foundations of a modern account of Hñähñu language

ABSTRACT De Lingua Othomitorum Dissertatio by Manuel de San Juan Crisóstomo Nájera was the first linguistic study of modern Mexico and it paved the way for the study of original languages both within the academy and within other state institutions. The text also marks the end of a three-century-long interaction between Latin, Ancient Greek and indigenous languages and reveals a time in which Latin had lost its prestige and was becoming a language deemed to be of philological and academic interest only. A case can be made that Nájera’s Dissertatio foreshadows the epistemology currently used to explain linguistic politics in present-day Mexico City, which places not only an urbanised nation state at its core, but also continues to privilege Indo-European western languages over hundreds of living Mexican original languages. Focusing on the contact between Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hñähñu, this paper will analyse the responsibility of contemporary classical scholars to engage with the original languages of Mexico and will argue that this engagement can also lead to the decolonisation of classical studies themselves.

International assemblage of the security of tenure and the interaction of city politics with the international normative discourse

The article approaches the development of security of tenure as a core component of the international human right to adequate housing through the assemblage theory. The concept of security of tenure has been assembled through institutional processes led by UN-Habitat, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Adequate Housing, the World Bank and others. These international institutions have developed a plurality of approaches to the tenure security. In addition, through international regime interaction these different approaches eventually became linked and started influencing each other. In such a way, the security of tenure developed from underdeveloped and separated human rights norm, developmental goal, and attribute of freehold title to a house or land, to a complex and pluralistic concept. Furthermore, the recognition of the complexity and the plurality of forms of tenure security have been related to the semiformal nature of international processes led by UN-Habitat and others, which connected the international level with the local conditions around the world. Through these processes, a pallet of actors with local experiences made international institutions recognize the uniqueness and complexity of the urban/local space as crucial for approaching the tenure security. Acknowledging the specificity and the pluralism of local – urban – socio-political spaces by international institutions shows how interlinked international and urban levels of policy-making have become.

‘Tearing itself apart over showpiece projects’: Planning-led Local Elections in Aberdeen, 2002–2012

Members of the public wanting to influence the determination of a controversial development proposal will usually rely upon the direct measure of writing to the council to express their opinions. But where the arithmetic of the council is finely balanced, and notwithstanding the restrictions placed on councillors from declaring a definitive position on a live planning application, voters may be able to influence the outcome of the project indirectly via the ballot box. This paper examines the impact which a series of controversial development projects had on the outcome of local elections in Aberdeen between 2002 and 2012. During this period, the city moved from Labour domination to two- and three-way coalition control. In each of the three local elections, two or more of the major parties adopted clear positions on these highly charged proposals. These positions probably impacted upon voting behaviour and certainly influenced post-election coalition-building. Proposals for a new bridge crossing and a new football stadium were narrowly approved, whilst that for a new city centre square was narrowly rejected. In each case, councillors voted predominantly along party lines. The paper demonstrates the significant influence which planning had on the city's electoral politics over the decade.

The Specter of ‘Politics’ and Ghosts of ‘Alternatives’ Past: Lebanese ‘Civil Society’ and the Antinomies of Contemporary Politics

The Lebanese scene has witnessed important developments since the onset of the garbage crisis, particularly in the translation of ‘civil society’ activism and political disaffection into ‘alternative’ realms of political mobilization and participation. The social movement scene witnessed for the first time on such a large scale the multiplication of campaigns denouncing the political order. However, groups’ contending strategic and ideological orientations raised tensions between tendencies hoping to focus singularly on the garbage crisis and others hoping to place the crisis within its larger structural context. The Hirak’s (movement) inability to affect change compelled several activists towards reformist agendas through the electoral process and logic of gradual ‘change from within.’ The most prominent electoral initiative sought to reclaim the city and representative politics under the name (‘Beirut, My City’). The municipal electoral campaign, however, sidelined contentious political issues and structural inequalities vested in the city in favor of an accommodating developmental programe. Following months of deliberation, Beirut Madinati decided to ‘remain at the local level’, while some of its members joined force with other groups to form nationwide parliamentary electoral alliances, alongside a nascent ‘political party experiment,’ Sabaa (Seven). Exploring the recent developments in ‘alternative’ collective action in Lebanon, this research makes use of a content analysis of Facebook campaigning posts and interview data to study actors’ contending relations to ‘the political.’ The research concludes that rather than reconcile citizens with political participation, nascent groups that claim to represent ‘alternatives’ to the ‘corrupt’ political parties and sectarian political order, instead advance a consensual understanding of politics and social change that is more techno-moral and less contentious.

Political Consequences of the Endangered Local Watchdog: Newspaper Decline and Mayoral Elections in the United States

Newspapers have faced extreme challenges in recent years due to declining circulation and advertising revenue. This has resulted in newspaper closures, staff cuts, and dramatic changes to the ways many newspapers cover local government, among other topics. This article argues that the loss of professional expertise in coverage of local government has negative consequences for the quality of city politics because citizens become less informed about local policies and elections. We test our theory using an original data set that matches 11 local newspapers in California to the municipalities they cover. The data show that cities served by newspapers with relatively sharp declines in newsroom staffing had, on average, significantly reduced political competition in mayoral races. We also find suggestive evidence that lower staffing levels are associated with lower voter turnout.

Public Service of City Government and Political Trust from Resident: An Analysis Based on 1992–2015 Hong Kong Livelihood Data

ABSTRACT Studying the relationship between city government’s performance in public service and residents’ trust in the government is of great significance to public management of Chinese cities. The article observed the relation between political trust from Hong Kong resident and public expenditure ratio of Hong Kong government. It indicates from the empirical study that the relation between political trust and public expenditure ratio is positive significantly under the current social environment in Hong Kong. Hong Kong government should devote itself to improving residential livelihood standard and supply level of public goods to maintain a prosperous economy and stable social status in Hong Kong.

When Does a Group of Citizens Influence Policy? Evidence from Senior Citizen Participation in City Politics

When does a group of citizens influence public policy? Mainstream American politics research emphasizes the importance of the group’s presence in the electorate, while other scholars argue that gro...