Can Cities Save the Day? French elections, sanctuaries, social ties, and the witness of IFE alumni (now) city planners

Increasing attention is being paid in Europe and America to how politics and policy at the municipal level can open up avenues of change. Partly as a response to what seem to be general inertia at the national level, researchers, wonks and activists are turning to levers for social change found in urban politics, demographics and structures.

Recent France-wide municipal elections brought this theme to the fore. The weekly magazine Politis published an article entitled “Local government is the place par excellence for exercising democratic power,” which looks at the renewed interest in communalism by progressive political actors in France. The NGO Groupe SOS (an IFE intern host active in support of social enterprises and local non-profit initiatives) published survey results showing that 83% of French registered voters declared that the quality of “vivre-ensemble”(life together, social cohesion) was an important factor in their vote in local elections. Recent journalism in France has focused on rural local governments’ increasing temerity to challenge national agro-industrial policy in their local ecological regulations.

The post-WWII story of cities varies of course a great deal by continent: “white flight” – or “suburban growth” -- emptied once-dynamic downtowns in America, while in Europe post-war growth led to elite capture of city centers while constructing zones of social exclusion in the banlieues. If upwardly mobile college grads have more recently repopulated central neighborhoods in American cities, many non-elite city dwellers on both sides of the ocean have seen an erosion in the quality of public services on which they depend and which constitute one of the reasons cities exist. The mosaic seems to be degenerating into an archipelago. European analysts like economist Mariana Mazzucato note that cities – certain parts of them – have become juicy bait for outside investors, and financing then flows away from core urban needs like infrastructure, governance, public space, and service delivery.

At the same time, notes French urban geographer Marine-Christine Jaillet, cities are cities: dynamic, densely and diversely populated, attracting creativity, and breeding citizens’ initiatives and civil society innovations. As Europeans’ frustration grows with States' and EU inertia on climate change, social justice, economic transition or democratic process, the urban context becomes a locus for democratic resistance whether through counter-movements in ecology, a return to social services and social cohesion, or by diversity in cultural expression.

With urban resistance in America making headlines from LA to New York City, Speaking of Europe turned to several IFE program alumni, who fulfilled internships with urban planning entities in the Paris area and are all now seasoned professionals in urban planning and development, to find out if at the level of the pavement they see any such trends in the municipalities with which they work.

Norabelle Greenberger is a city planner and vice president of La Bella Associates whose clients include small cities across upstate NY and the Northeast with a “rust-belt” profile needing outside expertise to plan and grant-fund the infrastructure that will restore their viability. (Norabelle got her “start” planning public space for a city on the Paris outskirts while at IFE.) She finds that local mayors and city council members are distancing themselves from political labels and divisive national politics in order to concentrate voters’ attention on local projects. So far she has observed that getting politics out of urban affairs, at least in smaller cities and towns, has helped projects move forward more seamlessly. The irony, as Norabelle points out, lies in the same local governments’ reliance on state and federal grants for the infrastructure projects essential to local renewal after long neglect.

Cathy Lin, who performed cost/benefit analysis of energy-saving fiscal incentives for the city of Paris while with IFE, is Director of Research for the International Downtown Association based in Washington, DC, supporting downtown and urban districts, and public-private organizations that seek to vitalize this special type of urban environment, in cities in many parts of the globe. In her experience, “most successful local governance in cities is at the ‘hyperlocal’ or fourth level of governance.” At the district level, says Cathy, alliances and other forms of governance are effective because they can know everyone, an observation that rhymes with the felt need expressed often in France for “hyperlocal” ties and person-to-person encounters. (In this regard she cites Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak, authors of The New Localism: How Cities can Thrive in the Age of Populism.) Cathy also notes that until quite recently there was a growing emphasis in downtown planning on reducing inequality and wealthy ghettos but, unfortunately, this trend is losing ground in the midst of national politics and themes pushed by the current administration.

Sam Scoppettone, a certified city planner like Norabelle, has experience working for small cities in the Northeast and is currently project managing new mixed-income housing development in Springfield, MA. He brings a valuable historical perspective to the question, reporting that cities are still struggling with the “legacy of a top-down development framework” and “poorly planned growth from the 1940s-70s Urban Renewal era,” which favored rapid growth, suburbs, and a white middle class. Sam sees the capacity of US cities and towns to carry the burden of sustainable development as limited and, like Norabelle, cites their dependency on federal funding as a limiting factor. This, in addition to the urban renewal era hangover leaving behind a system of “naysaying and litigation,” except in some large and wealthy cities with their own means. Whether progressive politics can beget progressive urban policies in US cities is, therefore, much a matter of the size, diversity and wealth of the city, and also whether its state is red or blue. In chorus with European voices on one point, Sam laments the ersatz socialization online which destroys local ties and leaves citizens incapable of reasoned disagreement, thereby hindering local consensus on important issues.

With some differences (including the basic difference between federalism and de-centralization), these overall themes flow across the Atlantic and throughout Europe. As an inherently comparative learning environment, IFE can be fertile training grounds for undergraduates focused on urban affairs and eager to get involved in planning, sustainability, social services, municipal government, and even urban agriculture, while gaining European perspectives in Gijon, Marseille, Paris or Strasbourg.

In addition to Norabelle, Cathy and Sam, other IFE alums have inspiring tales in urban affairs. Kathleen D. came to IFE as a student of urban sociology and is now Vice President at Preservation of Affordable Housing in Chicago. Sarafina A. was an intern at the same City of Paris urban planning workshop as Sam and Cathy and has gone on to found a non-profit consultancy helping municipalities take charge of their own green transition. More recently Eileen D. helped the city of Strasbourg improve access to city services for the disabled, public policy major Lucy A. joined the staff of the mayor of the Paris-area city of Saint-Maur, and math major Tarran M. has been working on urban traffic patterns for the urban environment laboratory LIVE.

Transatlantic currents feed theoretical development in this area as well. French philosopher Henri Lefebvre developed his concept of the “right to the city” (all of the city) in the 1960s as a colleague of Michel Foucault. His ideas were picked up by American philosopher Murray Bookchin who combined them with French communalism (which is having a comeback, as mentioned above, among left-wing politicians and municipalities in France contesting national policy) to develop an ecological version of urban sovereignty. More recently, UCLA geographers have marshaled this forerunning work as the basis for “spatial social justice,” a concept applied effectively in LA grassroots resistance to external neoliberal development threats.

The trade winds of change blow west and east.