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What Are Citizens Doing?

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on citizens’ role in realising alternatives in city governance. It first explains different conceptions of urban citizenship, in particular the concept of the Right to the City and how it has been used in practice. This is contrasted with citizen experiences of coercive governance and social control. The many forms of collective action through which urban citizenship is expressed are then considered, from community organising to new kinds of everyday activities considered by some scholars as prefigurative of transformative change. A review of concepts such as informal urbanism, social innovation and urban commoning aid understanding of the potential of these forms of collective action. Finally, examples of new municipalism and community wealth building demonstrate actual efforts to realise more equitable cities.

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  1. Department of Urban Studies & Planning, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Madeleine Pill

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Pill, M. (2021). What Are Citizens Doing?. In: Governing Cities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72621-8_6

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