Introduction

In a book dealing with cities’ quest for freedom it is only fair to give credit to the role that urban civil society plays in strengthening – if not broadening – cities’ autonomy. As widely debated in the previous chapters, local policy makers and officials do spend a great deal of effort building the political heft of their cities. However, urban residents, more or less loosely organised, also contribute to developing cities’ self-reliance through incisive political actions and cutting-edge ideas. Urban politics, hence, constitutes another weapon in the armoury of cities’ autonomy. Indeed, those cities experimenting with new policies and interventions and elaborating new political ideals autonomously define their political identity and further distance themselves from the state's authority.

As previously noted, cities have held a vivid attraction for social and political researchers. This interest in cities has been stimulated by the peculiar features of urban life. Cities are sites of social dynamics, such as inequality, gentrification and spatial segregation as well as solidarity and inclusivity, which help respond to many urban issues. They are centres of innovative economic processes and hubs of the global capitalist system. They are the crucibles of cultural and artistic creativity. Finally, cities provide local governments and civil society with a political milieu where new policies and actions can be carried out (and tested). It is this aspect of the urban dimension that the discussion of the current chapter is devoted to.

From a political perspective, the city has been conceived by some authors as the optimal place where citizens can be involved in the res publica, inasmuch as the local is deemed to represent the locus of democratic engagement by definition (Dahl, 1967, 1984). As Dahl (1967, p 954) observes, ‘[the citystate’s] millennial appeal draws its force […] from the vision of man living in a genuine human community of mansized proportions’. The long-standing political importance of the city has even shaped the vocabulary of democracy. Indeed, Blockmans (2003, p 7, emphasis in original) claims that, ‘the ideas of freedom and civic society remained very much embedded in the urban societies, where they had emerged since the tenth century. […] citoyen […] burgher, bourgeoisie, citizenship, and code civil all share the same reference to their urban origin’.