Sessions summaries The Conquered City
Reference Dialogue: City and citizenship for the 21st Century

François Ascher highlighted the relevance of cities in today’s globalised as the space in which the majority of cultural, economic and social exchanges take place. He then introduced the main issue of the dialogue: the disconnection between urban networks and their political reality, depending perhaps excessively on nation-states and transnational companies.

Michael Cohen took over Ascher’s argument to situate it in terms of a problem of the intellectual urban company in relation with the political urban company. The lack of city action in the field of international economy, although more than half of the world’s GDP and the majority of increases in productivity are concentrated in cities, and the absence of genuine dialogue on the taking on of new roles constitute the paradoxes that the speaker saw as problematic. The estimated future exponential growth of the urban population increases the need to consider political changes aimed at increasing the role of cities.

Cohen also argued that the need to strengthen power on a local level would be important to propitiate the resurgence of democratic values, currently mistreated by an urban network that has an extremely marked hierarchy. The speaker thus put forward the need to strengthen power immediately and create ‘responsible cities’.

Jordi Borja presented arguments similar to those given by Cohen, mentioning that cities are the main transmitters of globalisation and also the main recipients of its effects and that, therefore, greater participation in decision-making is necessary.

Among the positive features of local government, Borja made particular reference to its capacity for innovation, an interesting fact in the current climate of change: there is a need for political innovation and state power, in its conduct of hierarchy and compartmentalisation, is excessive in its rigidity and uniformity and does not channel the necessary relationships of engagement among the different levels of administration. Finally, and given the cities’ capacity to put pressure on the current powers on a world scale, it is necessary to promote city presence in the decision-making mechanisms of international organisations.

Giuseppe Pericu, the mayor of Genoa, highlighted the major challenge in cities in the globalised world of rediscovering and maintaining their own cultural identity in the face of the cultural uniformity that, through the uniformity of consumer models, operates today.

He then underlined the need to integrate everybody living in the city.

This proposal to incorporate all of the city inhabitants in citizenship was supported by Jordi Borja, who stated that cities have to give space to everybody, as the essence of cities is the coexistence of free and equal men and women.

With regard to the problems related to political power, Pericu asserted that it is necessary to find a means of uniting the different political levels in a single united manner.

Joan Clos, Mayor of Barcelona, was ambitious with regard to decentralisation; he called for more of the power accumulated by the nation-state, which has only to preserve the functions of the redistribution of wealth and those of defence, to be given to local authorities, as cities are acquiring central positions in the world and are showing great capacity of public expression. Clos asserted that, with transparency and good foresight with regard to the resolution of the possible conflicts that might arise, the strengthening of local power could provide a legitimate and effective political power that matches the huge economic and cultural power of cities. This argument was later highlighted by Michael Cohen as the conclusion to this dialogue session.