DemocraCity

Funding

DTC Fund, Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne

Project Status

Started in 2019.

Temporarily suspended for practical difficulties during the pandemic, as of early 2021. Some of these challenges are discussed in The Geographical Journal (2021), see here.

Project Summary

‘DemocraCity’ seeks to advance the geographical knowledge about the spatial, territorial, and urban aspects of democratisation. It pays critical attention to the concrete and material relationship between democratisation and the urban built environment, the space where democracy takes place. ‘DemocraCity’ specifically explores the democratic effects of planning and property law on the city and reflects upon theoretical problems about promises and potentialities of territoriality for democratisation.

The city, in our time, does not realise our universal aspiration for democracy that we want to shape urban futures together. In this context, democratisation is an endless project for urban societies whose ever-changing territoriality fosters their transitions towards some ends. The real, but often overlooked, consequence of the undemocratic urban governance is the production of unpleasant, and even inhumane, urban built environment for the people, especially the marginalised and minority. Through their legal geographies, planning and property, as two essential future-oriented elements of territoriality, constitute the socio-materiality of the city. Spatio-legal orderings of the city can thus be understood as the world-making effects of how planning and property laws are performed, practised and lived.