R
oss Beveridge and Philippe Koch’s How Cities Can Transform Democracy lays out an apparently simple yet profound question: where are the people, the demos, in the making of cities and urbanization? The answer to this question is far from complete or all-encompassing, but it can be brutally summarized as follows: if we are truly interested in and concerned about the democratic future of our cities, we should first look at their present, then at what already exists. If it is true, as AbdouMaliq Simone has put it, that a city “is a constant reminder of what could be but isn’t” (2008: 30), Beveridge and Koch demonstrate how it is likewise crucial to empirically and theoretically examine urban practices and experiences that have been around for a long time, albeit sometimes invisible, ever-changing and not always taken seriously.
Throughout the book, the authors gradually bring the reader into a carefully crafted empirical and theoretical argumentation, with the merit of overcoming the fixation on the state so prevalent in conventional accounts of democracy. They demonstrate an even more relevant point: that urban democracy has been (and should be) about “learning from ongoing activisms that find potential rather than fear in this reassembling of state-society relations” (Beveridge and Koch, 2023: 161). The authors convincingly unpack this by looking at politics through the urban lens, not in codified legal claims but rather by considering urban democracy as a political claim to have access to, to participate in, and to enjoy the benefits of urbanization as a collective project and common property. Thus, the beautifully written volume is all about the existing capacity to generate new spaces of collective urban life within (and despite) urbanization—serving as a constant reminder that, in order to appreciate the democratic character of urban struggles, we need to reimagine what democracy might look like and how it is practiced.
Nonetheless, the analysis presented does not withdraw the role of the state nor how intense urbanization transforms the material conditions of everyday life, sociability, and political embeddedness for urbanites across the globe. These conditions provide a communicative background for political organization, shared grievances, and the making of collective claims to democracy: even though urban activists and politicians may not dominate politics in numbers or impact, their actions embody a distinctly urban form of democracy rooted in collective efforts for the common good. Consequently, the book challenges the conventional view of politics centered on national parties and state institutions, asserting that urban spaces foster diverse political practices and organizations, presenting an alternative horizon of democracy that necessitates rethinking traditional political concepts.
Although the authors do not define their inquiry as “ethnographic,” the book also examines various urban practices and movements: from housing cooperatives and Critical Mass cyclist activists to the “new municipalism” projects in Barcelona and Naples. The aim is to illustrate how, despite their differences, the democratic impulse focused on self-governing urban spaces is always there, proposing an urban view of politics distinct from state-centric perspectives and highlighting the need to understand the city as a medium for democratic practices. These cases remarkably show how the crises of democracy linked to nation-states cannot be resolved by simply replicating the nation-state model at the city scale. Instead, they call for recognizing the unique democratic potential of urban collective life and the transformative effects of urbanization on political conditions by considering the city as a generative space of difference and a political force that can challenge alienated relations between people and places.
Beveridge and Koch also recognize that contemporary democratic systems often fail to address the collective needs and control over urban environments. Most importantly, “Our lack of political capacity to take control of the places we live in, to act collectively on the processes which shape our daily lives, is a democratic scandal” (Beveridge and Koch, 2023: 148). Economic forces and financialization processes have gained an advantage over democratic institutions, which have largely failed to address the democratic shortcomings within capitalism. To advance democratic politics, the authors call for a new conceptualization and practice of democracy, emphasizing collective rules and the involvement of people in shaping their surroundings. They propose that cities, despite the challenges of global urbanization, still offer a unique locus for democratic renewal by reimagining democracy in the context of urbanization, viewing it as a process rather than a condition tied to institutions. While it is true that urban environments starkly reveal the failings of both capitalism and democracy, especially through issues like involuntary displacement, the authors assert that the right to choose where one lives is fundamentally a democratic issue, intertwined with opportunities for political and social engagement. Traditional notions of democracy, focused on voting and freedom of speech, should be expanded to include “spatial rights” and active participation in shaping one’s immediate environment.
Moreover, Beveridge and Koch highlight that most people, lacking wealth and privilege, are limited to indirect forms of democratic participation such as protesting or lobbying, rather than having direct control over their surroundings. This situation is exacerbated by the bureaucratic and market forces that alienate people from their environments. Nonetheless, the book contends that a democratic city is not a relic of the past but a contemporary practice where urbanites make claims to the spaces they inhabit. This vision of urban democracy sometimes transcends the physical city, encompassing more than one imaginary of what a city should be, which helps to forge coalitions between different struggles across different fields. In this way, urban democracy, as envisioned by Beveridge and Koch, encompasses diverse and fragmented practices that are already present in everyday urban life. These practices should be recognized as forms of democracy in their own right, often distinct from state-centered politics. The city, seen as common property, is central to this new democratic project, requiring people to relate to and reshape their urban spaces collectively.
In the final chapter of the book, the authors suggest three shifts to reimagine democracy in the context of urbanization: focusing on distinct democratic practices rather than institutional forms; considering the entanglement of democracy with urban places and materialities; and recognizing urban democratic publics that make concerns visible and foster political subjectivities. This threefold assemblage calls for a new methodological approach, closer to what Sheldon Wolin (whose work has inspired this book) called “craftsmanship”: that is, being attentive and learning the collective skills of citizenship, improving them, and working together with others to forge practices, places, and publics of democracy (Beveridge and Koch, 2023: 163). To paraphrase the authors, the “public in space” (Beveridge and Koch, 2023: 153) should be more relevant than public space itself.
In doing so, How Cities Can Transform Democracy is an intriguing example of how democracy can be transformative when reimagined in relation to urbanization, rather than considering the first as something on the verge of extinction. It demands that we, as scholars and/or scholar-activists, continually question in our fieldwork where the people are in the making of cities and ensure they have a continuous and meaningful role in shaping their environments. This approach to democracy can only start with the lived experiences of urbanites and the collective struggle to create new spaces of urban life while embracing multiple futures for urban democracy shaped by the contingencies and collective will of urban dwellers.
References
Simone A (2008) Emergency Democracy and the ‘Governing Composite’. Social Text 26(295): 13–33.
Chiara Cacciotti is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Core Team Member of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab within the ERC Inhabiting Radical Housing project at the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy. Her research interests include housing precarity, squatting, urban liminalities and cosmopolitan enclaves. She has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork on the cultural and political function of squatting for housing in Rome.
