My research is about alternative land and housing models, and such models are built on the foundational principles of the right to the city, such as participatory democracy and, in Harvey’s own words, “democratic control over the production and utilization of the surplus”. Some of the models (“urban groups”) I am looking at include Community Land Trusts, Limited Equity Cooperatives, Tenants Unions and Socialist Cooperatives. What I have discovered through interviews and literature is that these groups exist primarily as a product of collaborations with other groups – that is, they would not exist without the bridges built with like minded groups to demand their shared right to the city.
The right to the city, especially as presented in Harvey’s work, stipulates that ALL members of a community are represented and have voice in decision making. This means that special attention needs to be placed on communities/community members that are typically marginalized in decision-making processes, such as immigrants, people of color, women and queer-identifying folk. For a housing model to work with such a philosophy and find/create leaders from such marginalized communities to sit on the board and effectively represent their people, often they must collaborate with immigrant/queer/black/feminist-type groups that offer programs, services, demand rights and host a variety of workshops and trainings. The core principle of alternative land and housing models as I am researching them absolutely involves democratic decision-making, which is why a key feature of so many CLTs and LECs is a “representational” board (i.e. a board that represents the demographic breakdown of the community served) and several committees that consist entirely of people from the community.
There is, however, a schism between urban groups working with directly similar urban groups; i.e. CLTs often exist pretty independently and do not rely on each other or any sort of system of CLTs to operate or share resources. I find that the root of this distance comes primarily from the fact that so many of these urban groups have emerged out of certain historical and political contexts that are not directly replicable and are often very personalised in their relationships to local governments, elected officials, sponsors etc. No doubt that many of these groups support each other by showing up to events and co-sponsoring campaigns, but often times a CLT will pair with a tenant union or an immigrant rights group for their campaign rather than another CLT.
I do not know, however, if creating a network (i.e. “building bridges”) would actually be productive beyond what I already am seeing done. I think it is important to recognize that while on paper these models may sound ideal, there a lot of messy and grueling behind the scenes work that goes on. If these groups were to collaborate with hundreds of similar groups as opposed to the most localised and relevant ones, it might actually be too many cooks for the broth. Perhaps there is a thing as “too much democracy,” especially when it becomes counter productive.
This may have been too much of an obvious question for you, but it’s still helpful to see you spell out the ways in which the organization actually implements the ideals Harvey sets out. Too often it can be easy to theorize without attempting a practical application (the whole point of this fellowship!) and it’s certainly evident at the Right to the City organization is trying to blend the two. I think that theory/practice tension is also inherent in your point about “too much democracy” and comes up a bit in Rachel’s work in Oakland too. What’s better than more and more democracy, we might ask hypothetically, but perhaps the better question is: how can we make the *quality* of democracy better?