Big Idea 1: Powerful cities and powerful citizens for global change

19 June 2013

The world is changing fast. Take the growth of cities, their increasing power - and their potential to drive social, economic and environmental progress. 

There's mounting interest in cities' potential to create well-being. But what needs to happen to unleash it? 

In particular, what type of autonomy should cities pursue to enhance well-being for everyone? 

We'd like to know what you think.

To kick off the debate we asked Professor Harriet Bulkeley to consider this question. Prof Bulkeley is an expert on environmental governance and urban transitions at Durham University,  

Below we summarise the paper Enhancing Urban Autonomy: Towards a new political project for cities which she produced with colleagues at Durham.

Please use the comment field below to tell us what you think about their ideas.

Living cities

First, what is a city? 

Cities boundaries are porous - there are flows of people, energy, materials, food, finance, knowledge, and pollution. Historically these flows would have been mainly with a city's surroundings. Today they're global. 

We might think of cities as a dominant species in a complex ecosystem. They depend on, and contribute to, the well-being or otherwise of the wider ecosystem. Living cities.

Autonomy and the city

Bulkeley and colleagues have considered case studies from across the world. They find four forms of urban autonomy. Of these they find that, broadly speaking, two are good and two are bad.

Bad autonomy

• Coerced or forced autonomy. Examples include nation states devolving responsibilities to cities, civil society or communities but starving them of money or power. The UK Government's localisation agenda, tied as it is to fiscal austerity, is an example.
• Fragmented autonomy - where power is devolved but in an incoherent or ad-hoc way that worsens inequalities. Bulkeley cites Delhi's Bhagidari programme which has devolved power to Resident Welfare Associations whose members pay regular charges. This has improved services such as waste management, security, and parks. But the growing political power of these associations has excluded the voice of the poorest living in informal settlements without tenure. 
  
  Similarly, in Victorian England before universal franchise the property-owning classes ruled the roost and the conditions for the poorest were appalling.

Good autonomy

• Networked autonomy - where areas or groups have power and work with others to enhance well-being for all. An example is the informal economy waste-pickers near Mumbai. By working together and with help from the municipality and unions they've transformed their self-organised livelihoods into more formal practice with safer working conditions.
  
  The Slum/Shack Dwellers Initiative has extended a similar approach to networking internationally as well as nationally, sharing knowledge and experience to drive campaigns for better housing and services.
  
  The C40 cities initiative is a third example, with city authorities sharing knowledge and driving carbon reductions even where national support for such measures is lacking. 


• Distributed autonomy - where power is devolved in a coordinated, planned fashion. Bulkeley cites participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Here power was devolved locally and communities were given the financial skills and knowledge to exercise the power. This resulted in a reversal of priorities: primary health care was set up in poor areas, the number of schools and nursery schools was increased, and most households got access to water and waste-water systems. 

The way forward

Some pundits - such as academic Paul Romer and UK politician Michael Heseltine - advocate greater autonomy for cities, largely so that they can compete in a dog-eat-dog global capitalist system. 

Bulkeley and colleagues disagree. They argue that such a "simplistic" devolution of power won't create well-being for people and the planet. 

Instead, they say the following things need to happen:

• Cities should distribute their power in an organised and just way, as in Porto Alegre.
• Cities and communities should network to achieve greater power and drive greater change, like the C40 and Slum Dwellers International.
• Cities should have greater power and enhanced autonomy to adapt to a fast-changing world; and they should experiment with alternative economic approaches to create well-being. 

Historian Professor Simon Szreter has said relations between nation states and their cities are probably optimal when characterised by a diplomatic and mutually respectful relationship based on genuine relative autonomy rather than by relations of dependence or complete independence. In many countries, including the UK, we're a long way from such genuine relative autonomy.

Your thoughts?

What do you think about increasing the power of cities? What powers should be devolved and why? What do you think about the potential for networking to drive change? And why do you think about the devolution of power within cities?

We'd love to know - so please comment below. Thanks.

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