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

• Grant number: 23/15208-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Duration: October 01, 2024 - September 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Administration - Public Administration
• Convênio/Acordo: Trans-Atlantic Platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities
• Principal Investigator: Gabriela de Brelaz
• Grantee: Gabriela de Brelaz
• Principal researcher abroad: Samuel Halvorsen
• Institution abroad: Queen Mary University of London, England
• Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Alvaro Luis dos Santos Pereira ; Gisele da Silva Craveiro ; Ricardo Corrêa Gomes

Abstract

In an era of eroding democratic freedoms and withering trust in electoral democracy, innovations in political participation are pivotal to democracy's survival in the 21st century. Cities have been a key source of urban participatory innovations (UPIs): new practices and mechanisms through which citizens inform and reshape democratic institutions. UPIs include both grassroots attempts to use physical (e.g. public squares) and digital (e.g. social media) urban spaces to build trust and reshape democracy, as well as institutional reforms such as open government and participatory design of institutions. Yet cities are also sites of political conflict and deep inequalities that express the failures of the democratic project. PAR-CITY brings together, for the first time, a unique interdisciplinary set of 25 researchers to examine how and why cities respond to the key democratic challenges of our times. PAR-CITY will undertake a relational comparison of 7 major cities (covering 4 regions across the global south and north): where we have existing empirical research and established teams. Each city has been chosen due to its promotion of one or more 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. At the end of the three-year period, the team will have shifted disciplinary landscapes by centering the role of cities and UPIs in studies of DGT, drawing new relations between disciplines and geographical contexts, producing a co-authored book, several journal articles and a digital platform. (AU)