As we question the power of citizens in the fabric of Western cities, we come to a paradox. Etymologically, a citizen, or civis, in Latin, enjoys the right to live in the city and manage it – by participating in assemblies, debating on decisions to be made – and to be elected as a magistrate, recalls Bernadette Liou-Gille in her book, Civis Romanus: Initiation aux institutions et à la vie politique romaines sous la République. The word “democracy” comes from a Greek term with the same meaning: the citizens of the city (demos) hold the power (cratein). A democratic regime entrusts the government to all; all are involved in collective choices.

In our representative democracies, citizens delegate their power to representatives. Universal suffrage serves to express the general will through the elected officials. Therefore, in terms of urbanism, since decentralization, the election of the municipal council through universal suffrage ensures the council’s power to vote on the local urbanism plan (PLU) and its adjustments, and to vote on the establishment of a Zone d’Aménagement Concerté (urban development zones or ZAC), for example.

Several tools favour the participation and empowerment of citizens on four levels that may coexist: information, consultation, dialogue and co-construction. The emergence of smart cities offers new perspectives to empower citizens to become players in the design and management of their city. The measure of how we travel and the analysis of our forms of mobility, for example, influence the development of traffic routes and the policies implemented to decarbonise them and improve traffic flow.

In parallel, a collective intelligence is being built, which generates a collective fabric in a city, as city residents are getting informed, are consulted, draw benefits from dialogue, and co-construct projects with a wide variety of players. A whole range of tools already exists to that effect: citizen platforms, serious games, neighbourhood councils and participatory budgets. The city’s fabric is also created in a poetic and uncontrollable way through the daily interactions between residents and the pace where they live, and among the residents, through what Michel de Certeau calls “arts de faire”, or the arts of doing.

Consultation
Neighbourhood councils, which became mandatory in 2002 for cities with more than 80,000 residents according to the law on local democracy, enable inhabitants to give suggestions, debate on points of view and think collectively about the evolution of their living environment. They can take the shape of participatory budgets which have enabled citizens to decide how to spend a certain percentage of the city’s investment budget (generally 5%) since the noughties.

However, the debate between professionals and residents is becoming an increasingly important part of projects chosen by city hall. In Paris, the Ordener-Poissonniers d’Espaces Ferroviaires project, which aims to transform 4 hectares of the Chapelle rail depot, gave way to several citizen dialogue sessions upstream, with 15 commitments integrated into the specifications of the future operator. The final decision met some of the expectations of the people consulted by eliminating some housing units to increase green spaces.

An ever-increasing number of operators in France are implementing solutions to bring local authorities and residents together in order to collaborate on the designs of buildings and city blocks. One such example of this is “La Ville E+”, from Société Générale. Following this dynamic, Bouygues Construction created “CityPlay” : a series of entertaining, digital and manifest solutions. The aim is to make urban planning a collaborative exercise, for citizen designers, operator users and involved residents. More information is available in the dedicated article.
« Arts de faire »: the arts of doing
A city is also made up of community gardens, collaborative supermarkets and even practices such as the “neighbourhood watch” which aim to keep neighbourhoods safe. These city transformations are not often reported in traditional media. But outlets such as the Bondy Blog and the La Cassette podcast in Aubervilliers, a collaborative radio project, invite the first people concerned - residents - to find out and talk about these “arts de faire” which can stimulate our imagination.

“Most of the time, when people claim something, it’s because they want improvements to their living environment,” comments Cécile Sornin, Mulhouse deputy mayor in charge of participatory democracy. This observation is shared by the dozen of city council members surveyed in Strasbourg, Paris, Bordeaux and Lyon. According to them, urbanism will be one of the issues discussed in the 2020 municipal elections in France, and residents will have to be involved. While a variety of tools already exist, such as participatory budgets, digital platforms, neighbourhood councils and public dialogues, some candidates suggest adding new ones, such as a “council of citizens on urbanism” or an “urbanism assembly” to promote co-construction, from the design to the evaluation of a project.   
        
But the already-existing tools are scarcely used, and mayors and deputy mayors struggle to promote them to the population. Elected officials and agencies dedicated to citizen participation have identified several factors: a lack of knowledge about the tools, a lack of representativeness or interest for public affairs, a feeling that it matters little or that everything has already been decided in advance, or, quite simply, the lack of a culture of dialogue.

In Paris, considerable efforts have been made to involve the population (a communications campaign both online and in the city’s public spaces, such as markets, was put in place to inform people of the system and of the projects). “Too many residents care a lot about their own specific interests, and much less about general interests,” according to an elected official who wishes to remain anonymous.

It is true that neighbourhood councils are becoming the norm, even in cities with fewer than 80,000 people. But “most of the participation processes focus on relatively secondary matters, where only minor issues are at stake,” declared Loïc Blondiaux in a 2017 interview by Anne Châteauneuf-Malclès. Public authorities are reluctant to integrate citizen participation into important projects and choices, out of fear of political confrontations, or of losing control over the decision.”

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the same observation was made. “Professionals think they are co-constructing projects when they allow citizens to have a few more green spaces here and one fewer floor on a building there, in the best of cases,” deplores one of the members of the Civitas association in New York, which fights for more human real estate projects in Manhattan. But “co-construction relies on a collaborative approach in the elaboration and implementation of a project. Citizens participate in a project’s piloting, implementation and evaluation,” reiterates Marie-Christine Jaillet.

A new culture of urbanism
Severe judgements in view of the efforts made by professionals. A serious game such as City Play, by Bouygues Construction, which presents itself as a board with playing cards, combines all stakeholders upstream of the project and invites them to a role-playing game to co-design it. The aim is to walk in the shoes of a mayor, resident, worker that does not live there, etc.

Interview with Marie-Christine Jaillet, sociologist and research supervisor at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Solidarity, Societies and Regions (LISST) of the CNRS.
Urbanism is one of the flagship themes of the 2020 municipal elections. In their respective agendas, some candidates promise the creation of a “council of citizens for urbanism” or of an “urbanism assembly”. Within municipalities, could urbanism become everyone’s business tomorrow?

Our societies are no longer satisfied with representative democracy alone. Entrusting their living environment to elected officials is not enough for the residents. Up until now, however, our political model relied on delegating power. We must review this model to introduce more participation without imposing representativeness as a prerequisite for those selected to participate.

However, there is a risk that certain social groups will participate disproportionately. We can resolve this issue in various ways, for example by a random draw, since all citizens are capable of participating in decision-making on a city’s structure if they are given the means – I’ll come back to that. It is up to the municipalities to enable and organise the best possible participatory system.

What about the experts?
Citizens are experts! It is important to involve citizens as expert users of their cities; their expertise is of equal value to that of professionals, even though it differs in nature. The reluctance to participation that is observed does not come only from elected officials; it comes from the technical sector, which deems that citizens are not competent or capable of taking into account the complexity of urban development. This is false. If citizens are informed of the constraints, for example, they can understand and integrate them. But they must be communicated clearly. We can further observe that professionals may feel rivalled by user expertise, or by the professional competence of some citizens (those who are lawyers, engineers or architects by trade). But this feeling of rivalry can dissipate if fruitful cooperation occurs.