Social Innovation and Governance in Chicago and Barcelona: The Strength of Social Agency and the Challenge of Building Inclusive Cities

Since the Global Economic Crisis of 2008 local governments have suffered financial constraints caused by national austerity policies which have jeopardized the delivery of responses to citizens’ social needs. At the same time bottom-up claims have emerged from citizens concerned about their basic social needs (housing and employment) and about the preservation of their neighbourhoods. In Chicago and Barcelona residents organized claiming affordable housing and income opportunities as the two cities experienced rapid processes of gentrification and sharp increases in social inequalities. The response to the unequal outcomes of urban transformations in both cities was bottom-up social activism organized at neighbourhood and city levels. Moreover, citizens developed socially innovative strategies that resulted in changing the local governance orientation (Barcelona) or in changing urban regulations (Chicago). The two contrasting city governance trajectories with different private and public actors and partnerships between them provide the context to explain the shades of social innovation in Chicago and in Barcelona. In both cities civil-society organizations and social movements have been active in responding to immediate social needs. In addition, they established “bottom-linked” governance relations with local institutions to adopt innovative programs. The paper also discusses how the use of the concept of urban citizenship and the global idea of ‘right to the city’ help explain these social processes.