Cities as Centers of Challenge and Opportunity

Worldwide, more people are moving to cities. According to the UN, 68 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050. This projection includes megacities, such as Tokyo, Delhi, Beijing, Mumbai, and Dhaka, as well as smaller cities. Currently, metro hubs in the United States like Columbus, Missouri; Des Moines, Iowa; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin; and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota have growing populations and economies.¹ At a time of increased global transportation and migration, cities are also becoming home to more diverse communities.

Increasingly, these growing, diverse urban spaces are where people hold jobs, raise children, find work, rent housing, seek medical care, and build community. They’re also where residents face daunting, everyday challenges like environmental and sustainability problems, health and safety concerns, neighborhood revitalization, and economic security. In an era of increasing inequality, rising costs of living, and stagnant wages,² many face “winner-take-all urbanism,” as Professor of American Urban Studies Richard Florida calls it.³ As Alan Berube, senior fellow and deputy director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, describes, “At least in the short run, city and metropolitan income trends do not suggest the existence of a rising tide lifting all boats, but rather separate ebbs and flows for households at different extremes of the distribution.”⁴

The concrete urban problems that residents experience cannot be fully addressed without federal and state policy. However, municipal governments must provide a first-line response, as well. And, in many ways, municipalities are even better positioned to produce useful policies to address these modern challenges, and to do so in a participatory way that leverages civic engagement to solve public problems with residents instead of for them.

For two reasons, cities have a unique opportunity to reimagine policymaking and traditional democratic participation to create more effective policy, improve the relationship between residents and democracy, and build civic and democratic power.

First, even in this era of democratic crisis, citizens have a more positive view of their local government when compared to federal or state institutions. In October of 2018, Gallup reported that 72 percent of U.S. adults say they have a "great deal" or a "fair amount" of trust in their local government⁵—a dramatic contrast to the 17 percent of Americans who trust Washington.⁶

Second, compared to state and federal institutions, cities’ smaller scale makes them more flexible to adjust funding, policies, and government offices according to local needs. Therefore, new ideas for governing processes from a mayor or local philanthropy can be adopted sooner and with fewer bureaucratic procedures. When implementing a collaborative government approach, this capability is especially important. After all, reimagining democracy by building civic power and leveraging civic engagement requires radical changes to every step of the policymaking process.⁷

In addition, municipal governments offer a closer proximity between constituents, representatives, and bureaucrats. Myung Lee, executive director of Cities of Service, noted that “the direct interaction between elected officials, city staff, and the residents provide opportunities to engage, partner and rely on the strengths of one another to address challenges, and build a stronger city and democracy."

Ultimately, according to urbanist Jane Jacobs, cities can create spaces for genuine public and civic engagement because they “have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”⁸ And around the world, cities are becoming more empowered to use these unique positions to address today’s biggest public challenges by implementing collaborative government and bold, new approaches to democracy. Cities, then, are increasingly becoming important laboratories of democratic experimentation.