Participation in the City: How Urban Participatory Innovations are Reshaping Democracy, Governance and Trust (PAR-CITY)

Lead-PI: Samuel Halvorsen, Queen Mary, University of London

Consortium: Gabriela de Brelàz, Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo; Guillaume Gourgues, Université Lumières Lyon 2; Agnieszka Kampka, Warsaw University of Life Sciences; Stephanie McNulty, Franklin & Marshall College; Anna Selmeczi, University of Cape Town; Zachary Spicer, York University.

Funders: ANR, FAPESP, NCN, NRF, NSF, UKRI

 

Summary:

PAR-CITY brings together a unique interdisciplinary set of 25 researchers to examine how and why cities respond to the key democratic challenges of our times. The project will undertake a relational comparison of seven major cities covering four regions across the global south and north. Each city has been chosen due to its promotion of one or more urban participatory innovations (UPIs) in recent years and will address the same central research questions in order to achieve three objectives. First, PAR-CITY will establish the empirical significance of cities for responding to the global challenges of democracy, governance and trust (DGT). Second, the project will examine the role of digital media, tools and technologies in eroding or strengthening DGT in large cities. Third, the project will advance concepts, models and theories of DGT through the central notion of UPI.