City Sovereignty: Urban Resistance and Rebel Cities Reconsidered

Abstract

The article argues for an increase in de facto already claimed city sovereignty. It situates the discussion, first in the historical context of city-state relationships, and second, in the current urban crises in the United States tied to the sanctuary city movement, then examines legal grounds for devolution of power to cities, before discussing the legal concepts of "urban commons" and "city power", finally outlining constraints facing increasingly sovereign cities. The article argues that current legal literature on "urban commons" and "city power" needs a stronger normative lens and better conceptualization of urban inequality, redistribution, and publicness. Moreover, if cities are to assume greater capacity to govern and to ensure life, liberty, and the sustainability of their populations, they have to overcome serious constraints in the four domains outlined in the article: (1) surveillance and control of urban space, (2) privatization of public space, (3) the rise of the luxury city, large-scale developments, megaprojects, and (4) homelessness. of 23 military, taxation, redistribution, infrastructure or public services, international relations, trade and migration policies, they are nevertheless showing signs of leadership in the arenas of land use and development, minimum wage, regional tax sharing, sustainable development planning and climate change, and, especially, as will be emphasized in this article, in the case of sanctuary practices in the area of immigrant inclusion. Sanctuary cities in the United States can be defined as places where a local government or police department have passed a resolution, a city ordinance, an executive order, or a departmental policy expressly forbidding city or law enforcement officials from inquiring into immigration status and/or cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency.The article situates the discussion, first in the historical context of city-state relationships, and second, in the current urban crises in the United States tied to the sanctuary city movement, then examines legal grounds for devolution of power to cities, before discussing the legal concepts of "urban commons" [5,6] (see also [7]) and "city power" [8], finally outlining constraints facing increasingly sovereign cities. While mayors may not "rule the world", as Barber's forceful argument would have it, this article argues instead that cities are not utilizing the powers that they increasingly do possess to sufficiently and substantively address urban inequalities and to expand urban citizenship into a fundamentally inclusive category. Barber is arguing that expanded city sovereignty ought to be a normative goal given the crises of the nation state, while this article argues that the noted normative goal should be approached with caution given the persistence of urban inequalities. The current context of the state hostile to redistributive urban policies, however, opens up a social and political space for a special emphasis on urban sov...

Addressing the asymmetry between central and local air protection policies: Insights from Poland

“…There are no winners in the dispute between the central and city governments. However, many researchers support an increase in the city's already established sovereignty, which will change its location in the city-state relationship (Filipcevic, 2017) and may contribute to increasing the effectiveness of the city's policy.…”

Two Models of the Sanctuary City

“…But I cannot call myself a Torontonian; that is not, aft er all, a legal category; it seems something more like a geographic or social one. Th ose who emphasize the city's role in responding to global crises oft en speak of the city as a site of sovereignty (Barber 2017;Cordes 2017). It is worth emphasizing, though, that this sort of sovereignty is rather unlike the sort of sovereignty held by the state under international law.…”

Конституційний Дизайн Міського Самоврядування В Контексті Вирішення Проблем Ххі Століття

“…Нові лінії сучасних конституційних і муніципальних досліджень визначилися у роботах з інноваційною тематикою щодо «конституціоналізації міст» [17], «міського суверенітету» [18], «міського громадянства» [19]. Вони, як правило, використовують міждисциплінарні підходи.…”