City Research Seminar: Dr. Ross Beveridge
Seeing Democracy Like a City
Urbanisation is changing landscapes, social relations and everyday lives across the globe. At the same time, urbanisation is also changing the ways democracy is understood and practiced. This talk provides a novel way of thinking the relationship between democracy and the urban based on two main arguments. First, across the globe claims for and forms of urban collective self-rule signal that the city retains democratic significance in a very specific sense: as an object of practice and thought the city is a source and stake of the urban demos. Second, urbanisation unsettles seemingly fixed boundaries between the state and society and thus opens the possibility of weaving together a new democratic fabric encompassing both. There is a democratic politics of urbanisation that shifts perspectives from institutions to practices, from jurisdictional scales to spaces of collective urban life. Seeing democracy like a city, we argue, foregrounds a way to re-locate democracy in the everyday lives of urbanites and to unlock the transformative potential of an urban democracy.
The talk will draw on recent work co-authored with Philippe Koch including the book “How Cities Can Transform Democracy” (2023) and the article “Seeing Democracy like a City” (2024).
Sergio Montero is Associate Professor of Geography & Planning at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, where he is also inaugural director of the Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods (IIESL). His research is often comparative and has focused on the politics and governance of urban and regional planning; on the global circulation of policy models and “best practices” around sustainable urban mobility; and on place-based and inclusive approaches to local economic development, especially in Latin America. He holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley (USA) and a BA in Economics from Universidad de Granada (Spain).
Margaret Kohn is a professor of political theory at the University of Toronto. Her primary research interests are in the areas of the history of political thought, critical theory, social justice, and urbanism. Her most recent book The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth was published by Oxford University Press (2016). It won the David Easton Award for Best Book in Political Theory and the Judd Award for Best Book in Urban and Local Politics. She is the author of Radical Space: Building the House of the People (Cornell University Press 2003), and Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (Routledge 2004) and Political Theories of Decolonization (with Keally McBride, Oxford University Press, 2011). Her articles have appeared in such journals as Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Politics, Polity, Dissent, Constellations, Theory & Event, and Philosophy and Social Criticism. She was a Senior Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute.
