Urban Grassroots Research Articles

Governmentality at the urban grassroots: governing from below in an informal settlement

ABSTRACT In urban informal settlements, the state’s material presence is often thought to be marginal or even absent. However, the state can be very much present in different forms even when its material presence might be seemingly absent. Examining the ways governing rationalities of the state may circulate and get reproduced in spaces of informality can thus offer a nuanced understanding of how the informal is governed in the everyday at the urban grassroots. Using Foucauldian notions of governmentality as an analytical lens, this paper examines the governing rationalities and subjectivities of urban citizenship that residents of an informal settlement reproduce in their everyday expressions and spatial practices of self and neighbourhood management. Drawing on empirical data from ethnographic fieldwork in Dhaka, the paper reveals how by reproducing the logics of the state at the urban grassroots, the settlement residents in effect reproduce state control within conditions of informality.

Exploring Innovative Structures and Mechanisms in Urban Grassroots Governance: A Network Governance Perspective

This paper examines the "Five Chiefs System" as a grassroots governance model in Chongqing, China, exploring innovative mechanisms in urban grassroots governance from a networked governance perspective. Through a literature review, this study summarizes existing research on innovation in urban grassroots governance, highlighting approaches in technological governance, process re-engineering, and structural research. Building on theories of governance and networked governance, and using the "Five Chiefs System" in Chongqing as a case study, the paper reveals discrepancies between the system and its operational goals as well as the principles of co-governance in practice. Consequently, an analysis of the adaptability of the "Five Chiefs System" and networked governance leads to the exploration of innovative structures and mechanisms for the networked governance of the "Five Chiefs System." This involves developing a decentralized network structure with diverse entities and establishing mechanisms for integration, trust, coordination, and maintenance within networked governance.

Defending water and life: domestic ecologies and social reproduction in Buenaventura

During the last four decades, communities in the city of Buenaventura, Colombia’s main seaport, have mobilized in order to access public water services. Privatization, poor infrastructural maintenance, and intermittence have made access to water a matter of concern. In this context, the Committee for the Defense of Water and Life came into being in 2014, as an urban grassroots organization, making calls on the city’s population to mobilize for their right to clean water. In this article, however, we argue that the acts of defending water are not limited to the realm of collective action and overt activism against national and local governmental decisions. Rather, defending water in places such as Buenaventura is also an everyday gendered practice where water is secured and protected against other beings such as microbes and/or mosquitoes. Drawing on collaborative work, we document how women protect water in less visible scenarios such as the home. These women engage in a repertoire of domestic activities and techniques in order to obtain, store and keep water clean, as stored (and therefore stagnant) waters are never only water but are also home to large and threatening communities of organisms such as microbes and mosquitoes on their water stages. We bring political ecology indoors to reflect on how gendered domestic spaces become a dynamic and crucial ecological and political arena for the defense of water and life.

Research on the Path of Urban Grassroots Governance in the Era of Smart Communities

Research on the Path of Urban Grassroots Governance in the Era of Smart Communities

Exploring the Path of Modernization of Urban Community Governance

China has entered a new journey of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way. As the basic unit of urban grassroots governance and the spatial organisation of social life, the urban community is an important hand in practising the modernisation of the national governance system and governance capacity, and in constructing a social governance pattern of "common construction, common governance and common sharing", and the modernisation of its governance is also an objective requirement to adapt to the change of the main social contradictions in the new era. In practice, due to the complexity and diversity of urban community problems mapping out the endless means of governance, this paper aims to clarify the concept of community and community governance, the requirements of the era of community governance and the current state of development of emerging technologies, and to sort out the current status of the concept of community governance of pluralistic governance, refined governance, and the current status of the community governance means of the PPP model (Public-Private-Partnership) and artificial intelligence. community governance means status quo. Finally, Starting from three aspects of community governance: grassroots government, community residents, and emerging technologies, the following community governance paths are proposed: government: strengthened guidance, weakened dominance; residents: weakened elitism, strengthened public participation; and technology: enhanced living experience, digital operation. It explores the concept and means of governance with a view to providing a new path for current community governance in China.

Creative Kampong and the Promotion of Sustainable Development Knowledge in Urban Grassroots: The Case of Surakarta

As the global trend is going into circular economy paradigm. The trend encourages business entities to focus on the production of durable, efficient, and reusable commodities to promote sustainable development. On the demand side, the market also gradually adjusts its preferences to commodities with sustainability values. With limited scale of capital, networks, and technology, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are usually lagged behind in catching new knowledge, especially those exchanged internationally. Sustainability, which is as an important knowledge under the circular economy trend, has caused serious problem for SMEs because those unable to catch the knowledge will be incompetent to serve the new market preferences and vulnerable to survive. Urban planning practices introduce the business district as one of spatial concepts to mediate the problem. It encourages enterprises with business linkages to locate next to each other and share activities and facilities. In Indonesia, the creative kampong is a local translation of business district concept, which emerges as a national hype. This research aims at studying the empirical case of the creative kampong and its knowledge transfer effectiveness for SMEs. By using the logic of Actor Network Theory (ANT) and focusing on the case study of four creative kampongs in Surakarta, we unravel the level of understanding of SMEs towards sustainability. Our data are based on stakeholder interviews and documentary reviews. The findings reveal that the majority of SMEs were understand of sustainability, and the creative kampong provided a significant contribution to ease the transfer knowledge process.

Locating agency at the urban grassroots: Resistance and reworking in the everyday politics of informal settlements

Agency of the urban poor living in informal settlements in Southern cities can manifest in numerous ways in their encounters and negotiations with the formal state and various other actors located in the hierarchy of power relations. A certain form of agency rooted in oppositional consciousness can emerge from their everyday experiences of various forms of structural violence and oppression. Drawing on ethnographic case studies carried out in two informal settlements in Dhaka city, this article examines a range of oppositional acts carried out by the settlements’ residents against various formal and informal actors to understand how grassroots agency is manifested and negotiated in such acts. It utilises Katz’s conceptualisation of resistance and reworking as expressions of agency in interrogating the strategies and practices informal settlement residents use in order to negotiate with and reformulate the conditions and possibilities of their everyday lives. Findings elucidate their capacities and modalities of collective resistance against acts of repression carried out by formal and informal actors as well as against the dominant, vilifying discourses of informal settlements. It further illustrates how they can rework the law to negotiate and claim space within structures of domination. The article concludes by arguing that these acts of resistance and reworking are not just a coping response to constant repression and domination, but a means of claiming a more secure citizenship in the city.

“Paired competition”: A new mechanism for the innovation of urban grassroots governance

In recent years, the focus of urban grassroots governance in China has experienced a fundamental change in direction from economic growth to public service and social management. Economic growth can be easily quantified, while public service and social management cannot, thus performance evaluation is largely dependent on “impression-based results”. Under such circumstances, a new mechanism of “paired competition” has been put in place to pair superior vertical lines of authority ( tiao) with subordinate horizontal levels of grassroots governments ( kuai) on a voluntary basis. Pairs compete with other pairs in areas of public services and social management. Paired competition can facilitate close cooperation between the tiao side and the kuai side, promote innovation, and generate quick “impression-based results”. However, the mechanism also generates negative incentives, which lead to excessive innovation and the reluctance to adopt good practices on the part of rival pairings. The case study detailed here is that of a “community analysis tool” promoted by the civil affairs bureau of “district A” in a major Chinese city. In addition to examining the organizational and operational logic of “paired competition”, this study also compared “paired competition” with the traditional methods of the “promotion tournament competition” and “special-purpose project system”.

Research on the strategy of improving the work capacity of secretaries of urban grassroots government agencies in the post-epidemic era

Research on the strategy of improving the work capacity of secretaries of urban grassroots government agencies in the post-epidemic era

The Sustainability of the Project-Driven Innovation of Grassroots Governance: Influencing Factors and Combination Paths

Governance innovation is an important topic in public administration research. Based on the empirical evidence of governance innovation in China, this paper analyzes the pathways to the sustainability of project-driven innovation in urban grassroots governance and reveals its complex causal relationships. Using the selected cases, a multidimensional analysis framework is constructed, and the qualitative comparative analysis method of fuzzy sets is used. It is found that there are three combined paths for the sustainability of innovation, namely dependent development, social embeddedness and government–society cooperation. The first two paths are the most common for the sustainability of innovation, and they cover most of the selected cases. Case tracking also reveals that innovation driven by project operation can stimulate the behavior of grassroots governance innovation, but it does not guarantee the sustainability of the innovation. The sustainability of innovation requires more mobilization of the grassroots society to enhance social embeddedness. Moreover, this study results provide inspiration for the sustainability of innovation in the later stages of projects.

Gardening from the ground up: a review of grassroots governance and management of domestic gardening in Canada

ABSTRACT The Canadian urban agriculture movement marks a change in urban land-use policies that includes a greater diversity of gardeners as views on sustainable agriculture promotes local food movements. Benefits of urban agriculture are well documented in the social science, environmental and health literature. Much of the literature on urban food-gardens in Canada focuses on community gardens and school gardens and gardening programmes, while there has been little attempt to gather and synthesise this research with a focus on the governance and management of grassroots urban agri-food organisations. We have undertaken through a systematic scoping review to reveal the extent of the current body of knowledge surrounding urban grassroots agri-food organisations in Canada, as well as governance and management paradigms and challenges. Of the Canadian studies, 15 were qualitative case studies (surveys, observations, etc.), 11 were exploration/analysis papers (analysis of primary research collected elsewhere), one was a literature review and 1 was a quantitative analysis. Significant challenges in grassroots food-gardening are explored. We found that for greater success of urban agriculture, municipal policymakers need to intentionally and radically shift policy to plan for and integrate urban agriculture networks into the urban environment without taking over the networks themselves. We also find that there is a lack of broad research into the influence of gender dynamics on the organisation and management of urban agriculture or community gardens.

Analysis of the Requirements of Modernization of China's Social Governance System

With the development of the Internet, the social governance model is changing from one-way management to two-way interaction, from offline to online-offline integration, and from simple government supervision to paying more attention to social collaborative governance, which requires the construction of a new pattern of grassroots social governance. Improve the institutionalized channels of mass participation in grass-roots social governance. We will improve the urban and rural grass-roots governance system that combines autonomy, rule of law and rule of virtue under the leadership of party organizations, improve the community management and service mechanism, implement grid management and service, give play to the role of mass organizations and social organizations, give play to the self-discipline function of trade associations and chambers of commerce, realize the benign interaction between government governance and social regulation, and residents' autonomy, and consolidate the foundation of grass-roots social governance. Accelerate the modernization of urban social governance. Promote social governance and service focus to the grassroots level, sink more resources to the grassroots level, and better provide accurate and refined services. Specifically, the requirements for the construction of governance system can be analyzed into four requirements: intelligent governance, participatory governance, municipal governance and media governance.

Urban Grassroot Governance and Women Leadership: Progress, Issues and Alternatives

In this study extent of impact that urban women leaders can assert in urban local political dynamics was analyzed. The study sought to gain an insight into what impact their political representation and leadership styles had on the affiliated self-governing institutions and grassroot governance in last 75 years of Independence. This study thus presents an exhaustive review of the studies of how the urban grassroots were empowered with imbibing gender equality at grassroots through increasing political representation and leadership of women, the challenges further and suggest a direction for future developments. Based on the analysis, now is the present to focus on women's leadership in decision making institutions from mere representation or allegiance to women's empowerment for a logical concatenation. Having more women leaders with transformational leadership style in urban self-governing institutions will have a ripple effect on not only improving grassroot democracies but also bridging the gender gap to meet the sustainable developmental goal gender equality target by 2030, by imbibing inclusivity and shifting focus towards issues of priority and social development. Further, a theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed. Directions for future studies could focus on the development of motivators to empower urban women leaders in urban India.

A Study on Urban Grassroots Risk Governance System from the Perspective of Social Governance

Grassroots governance; Risk governance; Review of research

Community gardening in Hellinikon as a resistance struggle against neoliberal urbanism: spatial autogestion and the right to the city in post-crisis Athens, Greece

ABSTRACT In this paper, we aim to explore how community gardening can embed and foment grassroots resistance to the privatization of urban space in the current configuration of a prolonged socio-economic and ecological crisis in European cities. We focus on the emblematic case of the Hellinikon self-organized garden; a case of guerrilla gardening that emerged as part of a social movement against the real estate development of the former International Airport of Athens. Community gardening in Hellinikon emerged as a resistance struggle against a controversial urban regeneration plan that combined green gentrification with unsustainable development and as a prefigurative politics of radically different sociospatial and socionatural relationships. We argue that community gardening initiatives that are part of broader urban struggles and grassroots activism denote a radical practice that has the potential to challenge crisis-driven dispossessions and claim the right to the city through spatial autogestion. This theorization of community gardening can shed light on the emergence of a new era of urban politics where demands for the re-appropriation of urban space by its inhabitants coalesce with demands for radically different urban socionatures in crisis-ridden megacities linking struggles for the right to the city to struggles for the right to urban nature.

基于AHP法城市基层社区韧性指标构建策略研究

基于AHP法城市基层社区韧性指标构建策略研究

The Urban Politics of Human Rights Practice

AbstractSocial movement organizations are increasingly developing human rights strategies at the municipal level, particularly in European urban contexts. Yet critical scholarly work on human rights has overlooked two related realities: non-state-centric, social movement use of the tools and discourses of rights, and the strategic participation of citizen groups in municipal urban policy spaces. This article builds on critical human rights theory through the experiences of three grassroots organizations claiming and exercising social rights in urban policy spaces of Barcelona, Valladolid, and London. It engages with a number of scholarly critiques of the state and human rights, particularly focusing on those critiques that question their compatibility with autonomy, democracy, and self-government at the local level. While the value of such critical literature is undeniable, we show how urban grassroots practices and experiences with social rights-based strategies in the context of housing, water, and participation can circumvent some of these critiques on the ground, pointing at new avenues for critical legal research when infused with other critical discourses, including urban politics.

Revisiting the Right to the City, Rethinking Urban Environmentalism: From Lifeworld Environmentalism to Planetary Environmentalism

In the environmental politics literature, cities are commonly framed as key sites for a shift towards greater sustainability and urban grassroots initiatives, such as food co-ops, urban gardening initiatives, repair cafés, and libraries of things, are commonly portrayed as such a shift’s key drivers. This paper develops a critical perspective on both common portrayals. It does so by drawing on critical urban theory, especially Lefebvre’s Right to the City. First, inspired by Lefebvre’s critique of city-centrism, the paper argues that the scope and limits of urban environmentalism hinge not only on the goals pursued but also on how the urban is framed. Urban environmentalism may mean mere lifeworld environmentalism: the greening of cities as if there were (relatively) bounded sites. Yet urban environmentalism may also mean planetary environmentalism: the mapping, problematization, and transformation of unsustainable urbanization processes that underpin given sites and lifeworlds, but also operate at beyond the latter—at a societal and planetary scale. Second, inspired by Lefebvre’s reformulation of right claims as a transformative political tool, this paper takes issue with environmental practices and discourses that present society’s niches, cracks, and margins as a key fermenting ground for radical environmental change. Since not only institutional but also bottom-up pursuits of more sustainable nature-society relations often remain stuck in mere lifeworld reform, this paper foregrounds heterodox right claims as an underexplored modus operandi in active pursuits of and discourses on radical environmental change. Heterodox right claims mean the active appropriation of dominant political languages, such as the language of right, while seeking to change the latter’s grammar. What this may mean in the realm of environmental politics, will be spelled out at hand of the example of claims to a right to public transport.

Religion in Coalition: Balancing Moderate and Progressive Politics in the Sydney Alliance

This article examines how the engagement of diverse religious organisations and individuals in grassroots politics impacts the nature of politics and coalition building through a case study of an urban grassroots political coalition in Australia: the Sydney Alliance. Based on eight-months of exploratory ethnographic fieldwork in one campaign team, this article argues that whilst religious organisations bring significant symbolic and institutional resources to political coalitions, and can be flexible coalition partners, they tend to moderate both conservative and progressive political tendencies within a coalition and demand focused attention from organisers and leaders to manage the coalition dynamics. This article examines the way many religious activists understand their political action to be an inherent and necessary part of their religious practice: problematizing the characterisation common in much social science literature that religious engagement in more progressive politics primarily serves political, and not religious, ends. In doing so, it shows how political action can be directed both outward towards the work, and inward towards the ‘church’.

The un-equal playground: Developers and urban activists struggling for the right to the city

The insufficient access to housing and the commercialization of public space are most problematic aspects of urban development in Poland. As we witness the effects of neoliberalization in the urban policy sector – with an increased presence of private corporate actors combined with a withdrawal of the earlier so dominant public authorities – there is still no long-term policy in place to counteract the negative social as well as economic effects on the citizens. To the contrary, existing political order in many cities supports market solutions, while scaling down investments in public space, municipal housing or building for rent. To better explain the dynamics of urban policy, the paper uses a field theory approach (Martin, 2003), to analyse the role of developers and urban grassroots movements in planning and building of Polish cities. Data from formal and informal interviews with developers, urban activists and public authorities are used, supplemented by results of participatory observations at national conferences, government workshops and activists’ gatherings. Paper describes the ongoing ‘game of the city’ (Domaradzka and Wijkström, 2016) in which incumbents defend their dominant position and control over space, while a set of challengers seek to introduce new values and behaviours. It presents the wider context of Polish urban policy field and organizational practices of developers and urban activists to illustrate the field dynamics and actors’ changing strategies. The analysis also shows how the dominant narratives are shaped through re-defining the ‘right to the city’ frame and incorporating it into the developers’ agenda.