Civil society organisations have become an increasingly important part of governance in cities and urban settlements in many countries. In the UK public participation has been on the statute book for nearly 60 years. The purpose of this study day is to assess how effective civil society has been in influencing urban development and more cities generally. This study day will be followed by a series of broader and comparative events in 2025.

    Civil society is a rather nebulous term. While historian Kocka defined it as ‘a type of social action’ (Kocka 2004, p. 68), the term has frequently been reduced to NGOs (Jacobsson and Korolczuk 2020, p. 126) or conflated with mass mobilisations (Soteri-Proctor, Phillimore, and McCabe 2013, p. 1024-5). Yet, it can cover a wide range of groups from social movement networks to grassroots community-based organisations.” (Soteri-Proctor, Phillimore, and McCabe 2013, p. 1025). Consequently, it is important to consider not just government-listed bodies but also those operating under the radar (Phillimore and Soteri-Proctor 2009), by ‘tak[ing] into account “uneventful” activism’ (Jacobsson and Korolczuk 2020, p. 139).

    While the term is embedded into the notion of democracy, it is also often given an urban dimension. Thus, urbanist Mike Douglass noted that ‘the rise of civil society is manifested in at least two ways: first, the increasing pressure for more liveable cities that provide spaces for everyday forms of social engagement away from state and corporate control and, second, insurgent occupation of urban spaces by citizens and non-citizen alike who mobilize to push an agenda for political reform.’ (Douglass 2007, p. 1). In the UK, where environmental issues and the right to the city have provided fertile ground for recent activism, civil society bodies may comprise neighbourhood forums and community land trusts. In addition, there are many - also urban - heritage trusts often operating with a large volunteer basis and providing highly valued community places and activities.

    However, there is a dearth of research on civil society and cities, and this study day aims to fill part of the gap in literature. Over the past fifteen years, scientific events have been held on the notion itself, on law and social movements, on democracy, sometimes in a transnational perspective, or on the contrary, in a specific geographical context, such as Russia. However, only one international conference, organised in 2009 by the UNESCO Chair on Urban Politics and Citizenship, homed in on urban policies with a particular focus on the notion of empowerment.

    The event also encourages reflection on the evolution of the notion. The term has acquired different meanings according to the language and the country (Kocka 2004, p. 65). In Western countries, the realm of civil society stemmed from the Lockean concept of self-organising society (Anheier, 2005), which later first evolved into nineteenth-century philanthropic practises, and then into the concept of voluntarism. In the UK, the notion moved up the political agenda and civil society regained momentum in the 1960s with the rediscovery of poverty, the development of community planning and urban programmes. It also benefited in the 1980s and 1990s from a context of acute public spending cuts, and distrust for local authorities. Since then, civil society has developed through an increasing push towards localism in order to overcome supposedly long-term social problems. In 2010, with David Cameron’s initial Big Society, community empowerment became a key watchword as an alternative to Big Government (Balazard, Fisher, and Scott 2017). It positioned ‘individuals and communities, rather than the State, as the leading force for progress’ (Evans, Marsh, and Stoker 2013) (in the fields of planning or education for instance). In particular, the 2011 Localism Act introduced neighbourhood planning, and offered ‘influence and power at a very local level’ (Brookfield 2017).

    Therefore, the growth of civil society through the community sector has increasingly officially become synonymous with building the city from below, that is allowing citizens and residents to have their say and be stakeholders in the future of their neighbourhoods and more generally cities. Yet, critical perspectives on participation are to be considered, in line with Brookfield’s study (2017) which provided a review of neighbourhood planning. Various obstacles have been highlighted (Salter, Parker, and Wargent 2023; Field and Layard 2017) and the place of urban civil society between the market and the state has been questioned (Foley and Edwards 1996).

    Thus, the success of community empowerment through the growth of civil society is still a matter for debate. This is the reason why we feel that after sixty years of public participation, and more than a decade of localism it is time to try and assess the outcome of this citizen-based agenda. Has it been successful? If so where? Can we consider community empowerment to be stronger nowadays than at the time when civil society was just equal to the voluntary sector? The composition of civil society is also to be discussed. Who are the urban civil society practitioners? Who are the citizens involved in the city-building, city-planning and urban management processes? In the same vein, it is also worth questioning the social and gender dimension of the urban civil society institutions.

    Thinking about civil society’s contributions to shaping the future of cities can also lead to enquiries into the knowledge it produced and the ways in which it is fed into policy making and implementation processes. In their introduction to a recent edited volume, Suarsana, Meyer and Glücker (2000) have raised a number of questions related to the place of civil society in the creation of knowledge. How do these overarching questions apply to the urban context? What type of specific knowledge can the civil society produce and what is its value to foster positive change? How do current processes allow for this knowledge to be taken on board in policymaking and delivery? In addition, further research is needed to identify and understand the range of factors that influence how civil society intermediaries perceive evidence (Allen 2017).

    The event aims at analysing what it means to make the city from the grassroots up and assess the impact of community participation and localism, in the UK, and in various fields. The conference will welcome paper proposals on a variety of themes related to the UK such as:

• The effectiveness of civil society participation;
• Governance and regulation of the city;
• Local services;
• Environmental concerns and sustainability;
• Planning and its effectiveness;
• Diversity and equality, representativeness in participation;
• The right to the city; and
• Civil society participation as knowledge production.

    Contributions can reflect varied scales whether they focus on small-scale grassroots associations or established organisations at the street, district, borough, city-wide, regional, national or international level) in a monographic or comparative approach but in a contemporary perspective rather than a historical one.

    Interdisciplinary approaches – urban planning, architecture, sociology, history, geography, political science – will be strongly encouraged.

Please submit an abstract of 300-500 words (in English) with a short biblio-biography to the conference Paris organizers by 31 January 2024.

mariepierrelvincent@gmail.com
david.fee@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr

    The contributors will be invited to present their work on 7 June 2024 at: Maison de la Recherche Sorbonne Nouvelle, 4 rue des Irlandais, 75005 Paris, Scientific committee:

• Bob Colenutt, Brookes University, Oxford
• Sabine Coady Schäbitz, Coventry University
• Alison Davies, Nottingham University
• David Fée, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
• Stéphane Sadoux, Grenoble National School of Architecture
• Marie Pierre Vincent, Université Paris 1-Panthéon 

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Photo de Andras Stefuca