Participation in the City (PAR-CITY): How Urban Participatory Innovations Are Reshaping Democracy, Governance and Trust
Overview
PAR-CITY is a trans-Atlantic, interdisciplinary research project examining how and why cities respond to the key democratic challenges of our times. It brings together 25 researchers undertaking a relational comparison of 7 major cities across 4 world regions, spanning the global south and north. Each city has been chosen due to its promotion of one or more urban participatory innovations (UPIs) in recent years and will address the same central research questions and objectives.
In an era of eroding democratic freedoms and withering trust in electoral democracy, innovations in political participation are pivotal to democracy’s survival in the 21st century. Cities have been a key source of UPIs: ‘a set of practices, inventions and devices implemented by professional political actors, citizens or interest groups and aiming at changing more or less radically what is usually perceived as “politics as usual” in representative democracy’ (Alexandre-Collier et al, 2020, 16), organized around urban localities and lines of belonging and oriented around enhancing or modifying political participation in and through cities.
PAR-CITY aims to advance concepts, models and theories of Democracy, Governance, and Trust (DGT) through the central notion of UPI. At the end of the three-year period, the team will have shifted disciplinary landscapes by centering the role of cities and UPIs in studies of DGT, drawing new relations between disciplines and geographical contexts, producing a co-authored book, several journal articles and a digital platform.
Research Objectives
The project pursues three objectives:
- Establish the empirical significance of cities for responding to the global challenges of democracy, governance and trust (DGT).
- Examine the role of digital media, tools and technologies in eroding or strengthening DGT in large cities.
- Advance concepts, models and theories of DGT through the central notion of Urban Participatory Innovation (UPI).
Central Research Questions
The following three research questions are addressed across all seven cities:
- How are urban participatory innovations (UPIs) reshaping power, authority, and conflict?
- How do UPIs confront marginalisation and inequalities?
- How do concepts, understandings, and practices of UPIs relate across geographical differences?
Participating Cities:
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Lyon, France
- New York City, USA
- São Paulo, Brazil
- Toronto, Canada
- Warsaw, Poland
Cape Town Focus – UCT / UWC Research Team
Cape Town carries a persistent legacy of spatial apartheid and racial segregation. Declining trust in government and compounding crises of corruption, inflation and youth unemployment have reduced participation in formal political processes. The Cape Town research team explores these tensions through two cases that highlights grassroots alliances and community organizing(UPI5). First case is the Community Action Networks (CANs) that emerged in the context of COVID-19 to fill gaps in social provision, facilitating participation across racialised spatial divides and demonstrating novel practices of solidarity. Second case is the housing occupation by Reclaim the City (RTC) to contest ongoing marginalization and lack of affordable housing in Cape Town’s inner city. The University of Cape Town / University of the Western Cape team investigates how residents engage both formal and informal channels of local governance to remedy the felt distance of government institutions from everyday concerns.
Project Consortium
- Lead PI: Sam Halvorsen, Queen Mary University of London
- Co-PIs: Anna Selmeczi (University of Cape Town); Gabriela de Brelaz (UNIFESP / CEBRAP, Brazil); Agnieszka Kampka (Warsaw University of Life Sciences); Zachary Spicer (York University, Canada); Guillaume Gourgues (Université Lumière Lyon 2, France); Stephanie McNulty (Franklin and Marshall College, USA)
- Project Manager: Eliana Persky, UBA / Universidad Nacional de San Martín
Cape Town Research Team
- Dr Anna Selmeczi: Co-PI, University of Cape Town
- Prof Fiona Anciano: Co-I, University of the Western Cape
- Saratu Mshelia: CT PhD Research Assistant, African Centre for Cities, UCT
- Boitumelo Papane: CT PhD Research Assistant, PUG Research Group, UWC
Project Details
- Duration: 3 years
- Consortium: 25 researchers, 9 disciplines, 7 countries, 4 world regions
- Website: https://parcity.org/
- For enquiries or more information contact: parcitytap@gmail.com