SUPRALOCAL · Beyond the local. The innovation effects of citizen supralocal networks and organizations in citizen-initiated urban transformations

Beyond the local. The innovation effects of citizen supralocal networks and organizations in citizen-initiated urban transformations

SUPRALOCAL is a project dedicated to the study of how citizens collectively and directly enact solutions to public problems in European cities. These collective interventions have become a common feature of contemporary urban governance, relied upon by public authorities to address housing shortages, vacancy, neighbourhood revitalization, and social exclusion. The project falls within urban studies and urban planning, to which it contributes through the original concept of direct civic action and by examining a dimension that existing scholarship has overlooked: the supralocal organization of these processes. A key assumption in the literature on citizen-initiated urban transformations is that civic action is inherently locally rooted, with supralocal relations understood as secondary connections between autonomous local projects. The SUPRALOCAL project was designed to challenge this localistic assumption, investigating how supralocal networks and organizations influence the generation of innovative local responses to urban problems; how they share, institute, and innovate repertoires of knowledge and resources for urban action; the effects of direct citizen action in the production of public goods and publicization of problems; and raising awareness about these dynamics among practitioners and policymakers. While the project initially planned to explore two network-based cases, it was ultimately based on an in-depth ethnography of a multi-site civic operator in Paris. This reorientation prompted a major theoretical development: ethnographic observation of conflicts between operators managing the same site revealed limitations in organizational-focused frameworks and led me to integrate the civic action approach with pragmatist philosophy and the sociology of public problems. The resulting concept of "direct civic action" constitutes the project's primary contribution, shifting analytical focus from organizational types to actions themselves. The project has fully achieved its objectives. As European cities increasingly delegate urban problem-solving to civic actors under hybrid arrangements, understanding how these shape the accessibility and sustainability of citizen-driven solutions is essential for informed policy design.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз