Urban Collective Action

Urban collective action may be very diverse in form and content, ranging from fierce defences of residents’ rights through art collectives and food-cooperatives to beautification-oriented groups. As a result, grassroots urban mobilizations give voice to quite different conceptions of the urban environment. Sometimes, the focus on community building or cultural practices of diverse neighbourhood groups is combined with ambition to participate in local planning; other times, with the aspiration to create relational spaces largely subtracted to institutional control. Some transform into urban movements counteracting the money-not-people-driven city investments. Others remain focused on the needs of local communities or creating spaces for arts and creative expression. Those different forms of urban collective action address urban issues through variable combinations of political representation, advocacy, and service provision, often directly addressing specific local needs or problems.

This session aims to explore the common themes in urban collective action, looking for actors, motivations or contexts explaining the emergence of those types of mobilization. We welcome empirical as well as theoretical papers, analysing the relational, organizational, or cultural mechanisms of development and/or coordination of such urban collective actors. We are particularly interested in papers exploring the existence of local, national or even global networks for urban change and their interpretative frames. We invite participants to explore how specific forms of urban mobilization relate to global ideas such as “right to the city”, drawing conclusions that can be relevant to a wider international audience.