Participation in the 21st Century City: Buenos Aires, Lyon, New York, and São Paulo

Renovating and reimagining democracy by creating new venues for including citizens in decision-making processes was one of the great hopes of the 1990s and early 2000s. Local governments were at the forefront of the wave of building participatory institutions, often aimed at including formerly marginalized groups and enhancing political and social equality. As the 21st century progressed, these initially novel institutions have evolved in the face of ongoing and new challenges. This panel brings together scholars from a newly formed research network (PAR-CITY, for Participation in the City) to examine how cities are responding to the global challenges of withering democracy, ineffective governance, and declining trust. Our work specifically analyzes the creation, persistence, variation, and effects of urban participatory innovations (UPIs) and asks how they are reshaping power, authority, and conflict as well as confronting marginalization and inequalities. The network involves research on (and from) seven cities in Africa, Europe, and the Americas; here we focus on four – Buenos Aires, Lyon, New York, and São Paulo – with brief comparisons to Cape Town, Toronto, and Warsaw. Celina Su examines how marginalized communities navigate the ecosystem of participation in New York City, including both institutional venues like participatory budgeting and extra-institutional venues like mutual aid collectives. Gabriela de Brelàz compares the creation of Open Government action plans in Buenos Aires and São Paulo, analyzing the extent to which citizen participation in these processes is inclusive and reduces inequalities. Rocío Annunziata assesses how the institutional design of digital participatory budgeting in Lyon affects social inequalities. Benjamin Goldfrank analyzes the trajectory of participatory budgeting in New York City with a comparative eye on the other six cities, asking whether this once widely hailed democratic innovation has a limited ability to become an enduring part of urban governance.