4 Representation

In this chapter, we examine how the diverse communities within a city achieve recognition and gain the right to participate in decisions that impact urban life. We begin by defining exactly which types of decisions are made on the urban level. Then, we focus on citizen participation and examine the various populations that influence the local decision-making process. Next, we address the concept of the right to the city. Does such a right exist? And finally, we look at the role public spaces play in incubating representation and bridging differences.

What decisions get made on an urban level?

Before you can consider how effectively urban governments represent their constituents, you must first identify the specific decision-making responsibilities that fall under the purview of local governments. Early urban theorists did not identify the unique political powers that cities had: instead, they sought to distinguish how urban communities differed from traditional rural settlements and to articulate the ways in which cities produced new social relationships. The field of urban studies arose in reaction to the wave of urbanization and industrialization that swept Europe and North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During this era, the city was politically subordinate to the nation-state, which made many of the major decisions that impacted urban economies, legal structures, public revenue streams, and trading relationships.

Cities have not always been governed by a larger national body. Some of the earliest urban settlements were city-states, or sovereign territories that encompassed a city and its agricultural hinterlands. City-states existed in the Middle East, Mediterranean, Europe, Asia, Central America, and Africa.^[1] The Sumerian city-states of Ur, Uruk, and Lagash flourished 5,000 years ago, and the city-states of the Niger Delta region remained self-governing until Europeans colonized the area in the 1890s. City-states were politically and economically autonomous units, but they did not always remain independent entities. For example, dating as far back as 900 A.D., more than 100 city-states of varying populations and geographic sizes were established in the Mixteca region of southern Mexico. These city-states retained much of their political sovereignty even after they were conquered by the Aztecs but lost their independence when the Spanish colonized Mexico.

While many city-states were monarchies or oligarchies, ruled by a small group of property owners, the ancient Greek city-states were the first democracies. The Greek term polis referred to a city-state and all of the territories and public spaces within it.^[2] The term polis was also used to describe a process of popular rule that was used in these independent communities.^[3] Greek poleis were governed by citizen assemblies. Participation in these assemblies was limited to men who were citizens and were not enslaved. Although these assemblies disregarded the voices of large portions of the city-state population – women, children, slaves, and immigrants – the polis represented the first system of democratic rule in the ancient world.^[4]

The polis fostered a culture of political participation where all male citizens were equal regardless of their wealth or standing. In poleis, assemblies of varying sizes and age groups passed criminal laws, administered justice, created currencies, collected taxes and solicited loans for public projects, purchased property, made foreign policy decisions, went to war, negotiated treaties, organized festivals and religious ceremonies, determined procedures and rules for governing, and made decisions about the economic, political, and social life of all of those who lived in the polis. Each city-state was like an autonomous country, which might join in confederation with other poleis or, occasionally, go to war with them.

During the Renaissance in Europe, city-states like Venice and Genoa flourished due to their role as long-distance trading centers.^[5] These mercantile cities issued their own currencies, maintained transportation infrastructure, and provided capital and finance to merchants, roles that are now under the purview of national political or economic institutions. Charles Tilly, a sociologist and historian, observed that cities during this time period were places where capital and wealth was produced and concentrated and where decisions were made about how to circulate excess profits.^[6] Tilly argued that the nation-state primarily gains its power through coercive means, largely by maintaining and deploying a significant military force, rather than by using economic influence like the self-governing mercantile city-states did. From the Middle Ages up through the 18th century, European monarchs began to concentrate military and economic power into their own hands. Instead of relying on decentralized militia forces in times of war and collecting taxes and tributes from city-states and wealthy merchants, ruling families absorbed these formerly independent financial and military apparatuses into national political, military, and economic institutions that subsumed many of the duties and decisions that had once occurred at the city level. As the monarchs consolidated control over city-states, these smaller political entities lost their autonomy, and decisions regarding foreign and economic policy were instead made by the crown.

Beginning in the 19th century, industrialization and rapid urbanization posed new challenges for city dwellers, sparking reform movements that won increased regulatory powers for local governments. As manufacturing drove urbanization, rapidly built tenement neighborhoods emerged to house factory workers. Tenement buildings were overcrowded, had no plumbing or sanitary facilities, and lacked light, ventilation, and safety features. The squalid living and dangerous working conditions in industrial cities resulted in low life expectancies for the urban working class.^[7] In 1860, the average life expectancy in Liverpool was just 25 years.  While urban workers had higher wages than their rural counterparts, poor living and working conditions led to disease and malnourishment. Height can be an indicator of malnutrition. In the early to mid-19th century, urban English men were shorter than those living in rural areas, due in part to nutritional deprivation.

As workers organized for better pay, reasonable hours, and safe working conditions, an array of urban reformers pushed for improved housing and neighborhood conditions. The emerging medical and public health fields documented the links between diseases like cholera and poor environmental conditions. In 1842, British lawyer and reformer Sir Edwin Chadwick led a team of researchers who produced a detailed social survey called the Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Populations of Great Britain.^[8]  Social surveys document a community’s living or working conditions by collecting detailed statistics like the number of people residing on a particular block or the amount of rent they paid, the numbers of windows in a dwelling unit, the hours they worked and so on. Chadwick’s survey led to the first housing codes, which stipulated basic requirements for ventilation and sanitation and to the establishment of local health inspectors who were charged with enforcing these building codes. The emerging sanitary movement spread to the United States. Starting in the 1860s and 1870s, New York City adopted a series of Tenement House Laws that required fire escapes and ventilation in all multi-family dwellings.^[9] By 1910, nearly every large city in the United States had enacted building codes.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries became known as the Progressive Era in the United States, and it was characterized by labor, social welfare, and housing reforms. While many of the new regulations were passed at the federal level, local governments began to play a more active role in ensuring that their residents had access to safe living conditions and basic services. Many of the services that are taken for granted in contemporary cities started as grassroots efforts to improve the living and working conditions of impoverished urban residents. For example, Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago, was established in 1889.^[10] Settlement houses were community centers in inner city neighborhoods that were staffed by volunteer residents. Volunteers were usually middle class reformers, and many were women. They worked with neighborhood residents to identify community needs and provide collective solutions to them. Hull House provided services such as English classes for recent immigrants, child care, and summer camp programs. There was meeting space for clubs and labor unions. Eventually, Hull House grew into a complex of buildings that included a library, labor museum, theater, book bindery, gymnasium, kindergarten, and housing for single, working women. Settlement houses were precursors to the social work profession, and many of the services and spaces they established, like playgrounds and summer camps, eventually were absorbed and managed by local government authorities.

The urban planning profession was created during the Progressive Era. City governments established planning departments that were charged with relieving some of the worst impacts of industrialization and rapid growth.^[11] Planners laid out long-term visions that articulated how and where the city should develop paying careful attention to the need to provide adequate sewage systems, roads, and open space. As the planning profession emerged, designers from a variety of backgrounds wrote popular books that contained grand schemes and ideas about how to improve cities. The City Beautiful movement consisted of landscape designers, planners and architects who laid out visions for enhancing city life by creating great monuments and civic structures that would uplift urban residents with the grandeur of their designs. In England, Ebenezer Howard published a book that outlined his vision for the establishment of Garden Cities – small, cooperatively owned towns that combined the best of urban and rural living. The Garden Cities concept influenced generations of planners who adopted the design, but not the social elements of Howard’s vision. The concept influenced the development of suburban communities in the U.S. and garden villages in the U.K.

The organizing efforts of labor activists and social reformers greatly expanded the decision-making powers of local governments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While national political institutions continued to determine economic, trade, and foreign policy decisions that had been under the purview of ancient city-states, local governments gained the authority to regulate the built environment and development within their boundaries and to manage various social welfare programs designed to benefit urban residents.

City governments and the global economy

Manuel Castells used the term “collective consumption” to describe the types of political responsibilities like maintaining infrastructure, regulating housing, and delivering social services that fall under a city’s purview.^[12] In the early 1970s, Castells sought to illuminate the role that the city played in the overall political and economic systems. Using a Marxist analysis, he theorized that cities were responsible for the reproduction of the labor force or supplying all of the essentials that were necessary for a household to survive so its members could participate in the workforce. While employers paid wages that enabled workers to purchase transportation or housing, the city took on the responsibility for building networks of roads, creating and running a public transit system, providing water and sewer service to households, and facilitating the construction of privately sold and publicly operated housing. The city also provided an array of services from public safety, fire protection, health, recreation, and education. Local governments collectivized the costs of creating and distributing these necessary services to the general public. Castells argued that the collective consumption responsibilities of cities were critical to the functioning of the overall economy and potential sites of struggle and conflict among urban dwellers.

David Harvey, an urban geographer, analyzed how the built environment of cities enabled the functioning of the broader capitalist economic system. He noted that pre-industrial cities emerged in resource-rich areas that were capable of producing surpluses that were distributed among the people living within that area. There were regional variances in resource availability, which led to dissimilar production and consumption patterns. In industrial society, many of these regional differences were smoothed over, because mass production and efficient transportation networks allowed for a wide-ranging distribution of consumer goods. ^[13] Harvey did not see the city as simply a site of production or reproduction of labor, as Castells did. Instead he recognized that cities are also places where consumers can access a huge variety of goods and services that are not necessarily dependent upon local resources.

In addition to outlining the role the city plays in producing and distributing goods and services, Harvey viewed cities as important investment sites for capital. He identified a “secondary circuit of capital” that consists of urban real estate and infrastructure.^[14] When business owners have more revenue than can be reinvested into their companies in the form of new machinery, buildings, equipment, or higher wages – what Harvey refers to as the “primary circuit of capital” –  they seek out other profit-making ventures to invest in. Urban property markets and infrastructure become attractive investment opportunities. The flood of money into these markets helps spur urbanization, but also leaves areas ripe for speculation and a subsequent real estate crash. In Harvey’s view, the urban built environment itself is critical to profit-making and the functioning of capitalism; therefore, decisions about growth, development, and redevelopment become vital functions of local governments that can have a significant impact on the wider political economy. One example of this was the Great Recession in 2008. Home lending practices and real estate speculation created a housing bubble and contributed to the foreclosure crisis and stock market crash. City governments played a critical role in facilitating the overheating of the housing market by fast-tracking building permits, loosening land use laws, allowing condominium conversions, and up-zoning land for denser residential development.

Harvey also notes that decision-making about where to locate advantageous and disadvantageous public and private goods are also sites of potential political conflict in cities, as well as avenues for economic redistribution. For example, decisions about where to construct a park can have tangible health and economic benefits for those who live near the site, while locating a sewage treatment plant near a residential area can lead to poor air quality, negative health impacts, and depressed property values to those who live nearby.

A decade later, Paul Peterson noted that the redistributive, allocative, and developmental impacts of urban policies are limited by the role cities play in the larger national and global political economy.^[15] Cities face the simultaneous challenges of having to attract and maintain businesses and jobs, while meeting their residents’ needs. The collective consumption responsibilities Castells highlighted cost money to implement. While federal or state funds may defray some of the costs of providing for urban residents’ needs, city budgets are largely funded through local tax revenues. Yet, businesses and property owners may be driven away by high local tax rates, which creates political tensions for city officials. Given this conundrum, Peterson concluded that a city’s most effective tool for controlling development and mitigating inequality is to invest in infrastructure and enact land use regulations. By controlling land uses, city officials can attract the types and amounts of businesses and investments that they believe are necessary to meet the community’s economic and social needs.

Peterson’s observations revealed an essential contradiction in the role that cities play in the global capitalist economy. Urbanization is the most efficient spatial form for organizing systems of production and consumption.^[16] But the population density and heterogeneous nature of cities also facilitates community organizing, coalition-building, and protest actions. The very geography that produces networks of power enables the powerless to organize, demand change, and threaten the status quo.

While the contradictions inherent in urbanization have been present since the dawn of capitalism, the common responsibilities that urban governments assume and the strategies they use to maintain political stability have shifted over time. Scholars from a variety of perspectives from Marxist political theorists to capitalist macro-economists have identified overarching trends in how the global economy and political institutions, including urban governments, are structured during distinct historical time periods.^[17] The need to periodically adopt new arrangements for structuring economic production and to create new governing strategies stems from the inherent contradictions within the capitalist system. A completely laissez-faire or unregulated economy will eventually result in crisis. For example, during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, owners of industries within certain economic sectors began acquiring their competitors and creating large monopolies. With minimal state regulation, huge wealth disparities emerged. Had this trend been allowed to continue unabated, it could have led to a situation of lost profitability, since the vast majority of workers had minimal buying power.

As urbanization and industrialization accelerated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and workers began to organize to demand better pay and conditions, new governing structures emerged to maintain stability in the global economic system. Labor unrest coupled with a worldwide Great Depression in the 1930s produced a new political/economic order that scholars call Fordism.^[18] The term Fordism refers to the dominant mass production and mass consumption economic model that emerged in North America and Europe after World War II. It is named after the automaker Henry Ford, whose business model was characterized by assembly-line production where workers would repeat the same task over and over again throughout the workday. Ford’s workers were paid enough to be able to purchase the low-cost vehicles he produced. The Fordist mode of mass production of goods designed for mass consumption was supported by governing arrangements that stabilized and facilitated the system. The dominant political and economic arrangements also fostered distinct social relationships and cultural practices.

Unlike the laissez faire attitudes of the mid-19th century, Fordism was characterized by government regulation, labor/management cooperation, and social welfare provision.^[19] Federal governments played an active role in fiscal policy and in ensuring the availability of credit to both producers and consumers. Facilitated by strong labor movements and political rules and regulations that encouraged labor/management cooperation, the middle class flourished. Federal, state, and local governments worked together to provide a social safety net, to invest in large- scale public works projects, and to create financial and regulatory systems that supported a middle class consumerist lifestyle. The social welfare system helped prevent destabilization when economic downturns occurred by maintaining at least a minimal standard of living and level of consumer demand.

Urban administrations had a critical function under this governing arrangement. With funding assistance from federal and state governments, cities administered social welfare programs and played a key role in developing and carrying out infrastructure projects. For example, local public housing authorities managed services, maintained buildings, and planned for new developments. Urban planning agencies and other quasi-governmental regional planning authorities took responsibility for designing and managing large-scale public construction projects such as highway systems, airport expansions, and ports, rail and road systems. Decisions made on a local level and carried out by city bureaucrats both reinforced and reshaped the system of mass production and consumption.

In the United States, the predominant geography of Fordism was suburbanization. Suburban expansion was enabled by transportation networks that connected residents to their jobs downtown. The suburban boom fed consumer demand for appliances, cars, furniture, and other household items, which fueled production in the factory complexes that remained in the urban core and provided employment for city residents.