Pub Date : 2024-04-15DOI: 10.1177/00420980241240951
Violante Torre
Urban scholars have long engaged with the role of culture in cities. Tracing this debate, this article outlines the evolutions of culture as an object of study in inquiries on the urban and wishes to trouble two persisting trends in this literature. The first is a geographical and theoretical Eurocentric vision of culture, often framing cities beyond the West as exceptions or needing validation through a comparison with a Western case or theoretical model; the second is an economistic vision of culture under neoliberalism, neglecting the political and ideological dimensions of culture. As a step in overcoming these limitations, this article builds around the notion of ‘re-learning’, to re-insert memory, informality and conflicting heritage into the debate on culture in cities. Drawing on an ethnography of the street ‘Avenida 26’ in Bogotá, Colombia, the article shows that informal cultural practices in the middle of segregation and urban violence can hardly be grasped through the current framing of culture in cities. Yet, they invite an opening up of such a framing to include different ways to cohabit and navigate space through everyday minor engagements. These multifaceted cultural realities urge us to ‘re-learn’ culture in cities anywhere and advance theorisation on culture that takes non-Western urban spaces seriously.
{"title":"Re-learning culture in cities beyond the West","authors":"Violante Torre","doi":"10.1177/00420980241240951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241240951","url":null,"abstract":"Urban scholars have long engaged with the role of culture in cities. Tracing this debate, this article outlines the evolutions of culture as an object of study in inquiries on the urban and wishes to trouble two persisting trends in this literature. The first is a geographical and theoretical Eurocentric vision of culture, often framing cities beyond the West as exceptions or needing validation through a comparison with a Western case or theoretical model; the second is an economistic vision of culture under neoliberalism, neglecting the political and ideological dimensions of culture. As a step in overcoming these limitations, this article builds around the notion of ‘re-learning’, to re-insert memory, informality and conflicting heritage into the debate on culture in cities. Drawing on an ethnography of the street ‘Avenida 26’ in Bogotá, Colombia, the article shows that informal cultural practices in the middle of segregation and urban violence can hardly be grasped through the current framing of culture in cities. Yet, they invite an opening up of such a framing to include different ways to cohabit and navigate space through everyday minor engagements. These multifaceted cultural realities urge us to ‘re-learn’ culture in cities anywhere and advance theorisation on culture that takes non-Western urban spaces seriously.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140557294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-11DOI: 10.1177/00420980241235374
Matina Kapsali
Over the last decade, urban philanthropic giving has acquired an increased significance for cities, shaping urban agendas and affecting local decision-making. Contributing to the emerging geographical literature on the impact of philanthropy on urban governance as well as to scholarship on post-foundational geographies, I argue that urban philanthropic giving is related to a post-political regime of multi-stakeholder urban governance. Contrary to being a linear process of managerial consensus politics, the post-politicisation of urban governance emerges as a multidimensional and variegated process of mutations and adaptations. Drawing from Athens, Greece, in the austerity period, I trace the emergence of a new donor-based philanthrocapitalist regime of urban governance and I demonstrate that post-political governance can take diverse forms: from the well-described in existing literature inclusive partnership-based approach to more authoritarian consensus-based governance processes. The aim of the paper is not just to answer if philanthrocapitalism gives rise to a post-political condition or not, but to explore how it is making and remaking (post-political) urban governance of public spaces, urban politics and urban everyday life. In doing so, the paper focuses on Athens Partnership, an intermediate governance organisation that was established to manage and support donations from the private sector to local governments in Athens and explores the ways urban philanthropy impacts on urban governance. Overall, the paper brings forward a renewed, more enmeshed understanding of post-political urban governance through an analysis of the novel philanthrocapitalist regime that emerged in European cities in the context of the recent intersecting crises.
{"title":"‘Adopt your city’: Post-political geographies and politics of urban philanthropy during austerity","authors":"Matina Kapsali","doi":"10.1177/00420980241235374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241235374","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last decade, urban philanthropic giving has acquired an increased significance for cities, shaping urban agendas and affecting local decision-making. Contributing to the emerging geographical literature on the impact of philanthropy on urban governance as well as to scholarship on post-foundational geographies, I argue that urban philanthropic giving is related to a post-political regime of multi-stakeholder urban governance. Contrary to being a linear process of managerial consensus politics, the post-politicisation of urban governance emerges as a multidimensional and variegated process of mutations and adaptations. Drawing from Athens, Greece, in the austerity period, I trace the emergence of a new donor-based philanthrocapitalist regime of urban governance and I demonstrate that post-political governance can take diverse forms: from the well-described in existing literature inclusive partnership-based approach to more authoritarian consensus-based governance processes. The aim of the paper is not just to answer if philanthrocapitalism gives rise to a post-political condition or not, but to explore how it is making and remaking (post-political) urban governance of public spaces, urban politics and urban everyday life. In doing so, the paper focuses on Athens Partnership, an intermediate governance organisation that was established to manage and support donations from the private sector to local governments in Athens and explores the ways urban philanthropy impacts on urban governance. Overall, the paper brings forward a renewed, more enmeshed understanding of post-political urban governance through an analysis of the novel philanthrocapitalist regime that emerged in European cities in the context of the recent intersecting crises.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140551917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1177/00420980241235781
Carmen Perez-del-Pulgar, Isabelle Anguelovski, James JT Connolly
As city-level decisionmakers generate urban policies and spatial interventions aimed at enhancing children’s environments and increasing their health, wellbeing and participation in urban life, they also impact the types of citizens that cities produce. Yet, despite the increasing ubiquity of city plans targeting the creation of child-friendly environments, child-centred transformations within the urban built fabric have not been a major analytical theme compared to other economic, spatial and welfare aspects of city restructuring in the context of neoliberal urbanisation. In light of this need for greater empirical and theoretical exploration of child-centred urbanism, we compare and contrast how plans reorganise children’s urban social space across different neoliberalising contexts. Drawing on empirical research conducted in Amsterdam, Vienna and Bristol in 2019, including 46 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders involved in child-friendly planning, we contribute to the understanding of how place-based subjectivation processes operate within these plans. We argue that child-friendly urban plans are instrumental in the process of creating subjects that have internalised the norms of neoliberal urbanisation.
{"title":"Child-friendly urban practices as emergent place-based neoliberal subjectivation?","authors":"Carmen Perez-del-Pulgar, Isabelle Anguelovski, James JT Connolly","doi":"10.1177/00420980241235781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241235781","url":null,"abstract":"As city-level decisionmakers generate urban policies and spatial interventions aimed at enhancing children’s environments and increasing their health, wellbeing and participation in urban life, they also impact the types of citizens that cities produce. Yet, despite the increasing ubiquity of city plans targeting the creation of child-friendly environments, child-centred transformations within the urban built fabric have not been a major analytical theme compared to other economic, spatial and welfare aspects of city restructuring in the context of neoliberal urbanisation. In light of this need for greater empirical and theoretical exploration of child-centred urbanism, we compare and contrast how plans reorganise children’s urban social space across different neoliberalising contexts. Drawing on empirical research conducted in Amsterdam, Vienna and Bristol in 2019, including 46 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders involved in child-friendly planning, we contribute to the understanding of how place-based subjectivation processes operate within these plans. We argue that child-friendly urban plans are instrumental in the process of creating subjects that have internalised the norms of neoliberal urbanisation.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"264 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140542164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1177/00420980241237139
Mahir Yazar
Populism is multilayered and involves two main dimensions – ideology and strategy – which are employed within and beyond political parties. These dimensions can result in sometimes overlapping but generally divergent backlashes, targeting specific climate and sustainability interventions in cities. This critical commentary presents episodic populist backlashes against urban climate actions by exploring how they create their own political landscapes across the political spectrum in cities against progressive urban climate agendas. Specifically, the article examines how episodic populist backlashes manifest on an urban scale and highlights the need for urban scholars to pay more attention to the phenomenon. The article proposes two complementary explanations for why populism precedes urban climate actions in episodic and thematic ways. These explanations include policy backlashes against diffused global climate norms in cities, and counter-movements and rhetoric against climate justice and what it entails, such as inclusion in decision-making and intersectionality. The article then concludes by offering a research agenda on the episodic populist backlashes against urban climate actions, which highlights the need for a better understanding of how episodic populist movements might emerge into global climate policy diffusion, and climate justice coupled with intersectionality in cities of the Global North and Global South.
{"title":"Episodic populist backlashes against urban climate actions","authors":"Mahir Yazar","doi":"10.1177/00420980241237139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241237139","url":null,"abstract":"Populism is multilayered and involves two main dimensions – ideology and strategy – which are employed within and beyond political parties. These dimensions can result in sometimes overlapping but generally divergent backlashes, targeting specific climate and sustainability interventions in cities. This critical commentary presents episodic populist backlashes against urban climate actions by exploring how they create their own political landscapes across the political spectrum in cities against progressive urban climate agendas. Specifically, the article examines how episodic populist backlashes manifest on an urban scale and highlights the need for urban scholars to pay more attention to the phenomenon. The article proposes two complementary explanations for why populism precedes urban climate actions in episodic and thematic ways. These explanations include policy backlashes against diffused global climate norms in cities, and counter-movements and rhetoric against climate justice and what it entails, such as inclusion in decision-making and intersectionality. The article then concludes by offering a research agenda on the episodic populist backlashes against urban climate actions, which highlights the need for a better understanding of how episodic populist movements might emerge into global climate policy diffusion, and climate justice coupled with intersectionality in cities of the Global North and Global South.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"263 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140542099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1177/00420980241235157
Martina Manara, Tanner Regan
Rapid urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa occurs with little land registration, and government-led regularisation schemes often find limited uptake of title deeds by residents. In theory, there could be private and public benefits from land titling in cities. However, little is known about how landholders value the various dimensions of formal property rights in comparison to informal tenure. We address these questions by unbundling property rights into multiple functions of tenure security and by adopting an innovative combination of methods, including an incentivised willingness-to-pay exercise, a survey, and in-depth interviews conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Examining how landholders perceive dimensions of tenure advances our understanding of limited land formalisation in urban Africa and provides evidence for alternative policy approaches to address local demand for tenure security more effectively.
{"title":"Unbundling tenure security and demand for property rights: Evidence from urban Tanzania","authors":"Martina Manara, Tanner Regan","doi":"10.1177/00420980241235157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241235157","url":null,"abstract":"Rapid urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa occurs with little land registration, and government-led regularisation schemes often find limited uptake of title deeds by residents. In theory, there could be private and public benefits from land titling in cities. However, little is known about how landholders value the various dimensions of formal property rights in comparison to informal tenure. We address these questions by unbundling property rights into multiple functions of tenure security and by adopting an innovative combination of methods, including an incentivised willingness-to-pay exercise, a survey, and in-depth interviews conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Examining how landholders perceive dimensions of tenure advances our understanding of limited land formalisation in urban Africa and provides evidence for alternative policy approaches to address local demand for tenure security more effectively.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140542127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-08DOI: 10.1177/00420980241232800
Anna Maria Santiago, George C Galster, Lena Magnusson Turner
Using longitudinal register data from Oslo, Norway, this article examines how cumulative childhood exposure to family and neighbourhood contexts influences the educational attainments of young adults, paying special attention to how these determinants vary by gender and immigrant status. Specifically, we examine how neighbourhood socioeconomic and immigrant context experienced during childhood affects the completion of secondary school and university enrolment during young adulthood. We assess the extent of effect heterogeneity for three immigrant status groups stratified by gender. We control for geographical selection using a recently developed technique that first models parental selection of neighbourhood attributes and then uses the resulting predicted probabilities of selection as instruments in the neighbourhood-effects-on-education model. We find that neighbourhood affluence, educational levels and non-Western immigrant composition have important impacts on young adult educational outcomes, though results differ sharply by gender and immigrant status.
{"title":"Heterogeneous neighbourhood effects on the educational attainments of native Norwegian and immigrant-descendant female and male young adults","authors":"Anna Maria Santiago, George C Galster, Lena Magnusson Turner","doi":"10.1177/00420980241232800","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241232800","url":null,"abstract":"Using longitudinal register data from Oslo, Norway, this article examines how cumulative childhood exposure to family and neighbourhood contexts influences the educational attainments of young adults, paying special attention to how these determinants vary by gender and immigrant status. Specifically, we examine how neighbourhood socioeconomic and immigrant context experienced during childhood affects the completion of secondary school and university enrolment during young adulthood. We assess the extent of effect heterogeneity for three immigrant status groups stratified by gender. We control for geographical selection using a recently developed technique that first models parental selection of neighbourhood attributes and then uses the resulting predicted probabilities of selection as instruments in the neighbourhood-effects-on-education model. We find that neighbourhood affluence, educational levels and non-Western immigrant composition have important impacts on young adult educational outcomes, though results differ sharply by gender and immigrant status.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140539053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-08DOI: 10.1177/00420980241236077
George Kiambuthi Wainaina, Bernhard Truffer
Infrastructure investments, a core element of slum upgrading, play a role in improving the livelihoods of over 1 billion slum residents globally. Established planning practices often successfully deliver functional infrastructure but evidence shows that their contribution to improved livelihoods often either is absent or declines sharply after some time. To explain this limited effectiveness, this article identifies the missing link between infrastructure delivery and livelihood improvements as lying in the appropriation process, that is, the uptake and embedding of infrastructures into the daily practices of residents. Recent insights from sociotechnical transitions studies help to conceptualise appropriation. The authors use Munyaka informal settlement in Eldoret town, Kenya as a case to investigate the mechanisms of new infrastructure uptake. Findings indicate that appropriation is a social process that proceeds in three steps: reception, domestication and institutionalisation. This process is driven by the need to maintain or adjust residents’ livelihood practices relative to prevailing socioeconomic and spatiotemporal conditions. The study concludes that appropriation is a significant process that planners should try to anticipate. Prevalent approaches to participation have to be modified accordingly. This is essential for planning to improve livelihoods in slums.
{"title":"The missing link for effective informal settlement upgrading: Appropriation shaping the outcome of new infrastructure","authors":"George Kiambuthi Wainaina, Bernhard Truffer","doi":"10.1177/00420980241236077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241236077","url":null,"abstract":"Infrastructure investments, a core element of slum upgrading, play a role in improving the livelihoods of over 1 billion slum residents globally. Established planning practices often successfully deliver functional infrastructure but evidence shows that their contribution to improved livelihoods often either is absent or declines sharply after some time. To explain this limited effectiveness, this article identifies the missing link between infrastructure delivery and livelihood improvements as lying in the appropriation process, that is, the uptake and embedding of infrastructures into the daily practices of residents. Recent insights from sociotechnical transitions studies help to conceptualise appropriation. The authors use Munyaka informal settlement in Eldoret town, Kenya as a case to investigate the mechanisms of new infrastructure uptake. Findings indicate that appropriation is a social process that proceeds in three steps: reception, domestication and institutionalisation. This process is driven by the need to maintain or adjust residents’ livelihood practices relative to prevailing socioeconomic and spatiotemporal conditions. The study concludes that appropriation is a significant process that planners should try to anticipate. Prevalent approaches to participation have to be modified accordingly. This is essential for planning to improve livelihoods in slums.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140539050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-20DOI: 10.1177/00420980241236124
Antonio Moya-Latorre
In July 2021, residents of Vicente Guerrero, a settlement built around the largest landfill in Oaxaca, commemorated the waste-pickers’ 40th anniversary with an urban art festival. This event was organised by Santa Cecilia Music School, a community-led cultural infrastructure that has shaped the social and material landscape of Vicente Guerrero since 2011. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted around this festival and throughout 2023, I propose studying cultural initiatives like Santa Cecilia as listening infrastructures to discern their ability to ‘centre’ peripheral communities through the opportunities they create for self-, collective and social listening, which, respectively, promote self-growth, spark community projects and display peripheries as creative places. I argue that the combined effect of these forms of listening – what Vicente Guerrero residents call community weaving– helps overcome material and social stigma conditioning life on the periphery. By examining these listening mechanisms, this analysis aims to enrich debates about the fundamental role of cultural infrastructure in the making of (Latin American) cities and their peripheries.
{"title":"Community weaving across Latin American peripheries: A listening infrastructure in Oaxaca","authors":"Antonio Moya-Latorre","doi":"10.1177/00420980241236124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241236124","url":null,"abstract":"In July 2021, residents of Vicente Guerrero, a settlement built around the largest landfill in Oaxaca, commemorated the waste-pickers’ 40th anniversary with an urban art festival. This event was organised by Santa Cecilia Music School, a community-led cultural infrastructure that has shaped the social and material landscape of Vicente Guerrero since 2011. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted around this festival and throughout 2023, I propose studying cultural initiatives like Santa Cecilia as listening infrastructures to discern their ability to ‘centre’ peripheral communities through the opportunities they create for self-, collective and social listening, which, respectively, promote self-growth, spark community projects and display peripheries as creative places. I argue that the combined effect of these forms of listening – what Vicente Guerrero residents call community weaving– helps overcome material and social stigma conditioning life on the periphery. By examining these listening mechanisms, this analysis aims to enrich debates about the fundamental role of cultural infrastructure in the making of (Latin American) cities and their peripheries.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"131 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140196162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-19DOI: 10.1177/00420980241231439
Emily Barrett, Sara Safransky
Budgets are often thought of as boring, invoking the tedium of bookkeeping. The summer of 2020 suggested otherwise. As America’s plague of police brutality combined with the death-dealing blows of the COVID-19 pandemic and a wave of urban uprising gripped US cities, activists turned their organising attention to municipal budgeting. From Seattle to Atlanta, demands rang out for cities to #defund the police, rethink public safety and adopt budgets for the people. Since then, the people’s budget movement has grown in strength at the municipal level, including in Los Angeles, Chicago, Louisville, Jacksonville, Minneapolis and Nashville, among other cities. What should urban studies scholars make of these struggles and from the aspirations and visions that impel them? This paper uses a case study of the Nashville People’s Budget Coalition (NPBC) to examine how municipal budgeting processes and public financing have become new sites of theorisation, debate and political intervention. We demonstrate how the people’s budget movement offers a new calculus for municipal budgeting that radically reconceptualises the logics of value and care that underpin economic thought and public accounting practices. We conclude by considering avenues through which a scholarly agenda for economic democracy in solidarity with movement organisers could be expanded.
{"title":"Reimagining the municipal economy: The emancipatory politics of the people’s budget movement","authors":"Emily Barrett, Sara Safransky","doi":"10.1177/00420980241231439","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241231439","url":null,"abstract":"Budgets are often thought of as boring, invoking the tedium of bookkeeping. The summer of 2020 suggested otherwise. As America’s plague of police brutality combined with the death-dealing blows of the COVID-19 pandemic and a wave of urban uprising gripped US cities, activists turned their organising attention to municipal budgeting. From Seattle to Atlanta, demands rang out for cities to #defund the police, rethink public safety and adopt budgets for the people. Since then, the people’s budget movement has grown in strength at the municipal level, including in Los Angeles, Chicago, Louisville, Jacksonville, Minneapolis and Nashville, among other cities. What should urban studies scholars make of these struggles and from the aspirations and visions that impel them? This paper uses a case study of the Nashville People’s Budget Coalition (NPBC) to examine how municipal budgeting processes and public financing have become new sites of theorisation, debate and political intervention. We demonstrate how the people’s budget movement offers a new calculus for municipal budgeting that radically reconceptualises the logics of value and care that underpin economic thought and public accounting practices. We conclude by considering avenues through which a scholarly agenda for economic democracy in solidarity with movement organisers could be expanded.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"176 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140165040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}