Who Governs the City

This seminar focuses on the question of who governs the city, and how. It organises readings and debates around a set of North American texts, forming what has been called the Community Power Studies that have structured the discipline of urban politics from the 1950s until today. Grounded in a North American context, and building from a diversity of urban monographs, this debate interrogates to what extent cities are dominated by oligarchies, and in what conditions their government may remain, or become, democratic and pluralist. It also questions why, in cities across the world, urban policies favoring growth and competition are dominant, rather than other types of urban policies (focused on quality of life, redistribution, the environment or else) - in ways that strongly resonate with contemporary challenges.