So Close, Yet so Far Away? the Effects of City Size, Density and Growth on Local Civic Participation

Abstract

Recent studies in the U.S. context have suggested that political participation is a function of the size and concentration of a city's population. Most of this research focuses on the idea that there is an optimal size and concentration of population that favors active political participation in terms of a higher propensity to vote in local elections, contact local officials, and attend community meetings. The conventional argument suggests a negative relationship between city size and political participation that is mitigated to some extent by the deeper social interactions generated by increased population density. We extend this research by also investigating the influence of population growth on the broader concept of civic participation. Civic participation is a multidimensional concept that requires the use of a broad set of indicators. We expand the number of measures to gauge civic participation at the local level by including data on the formation of volunteer associations, volunteer fire brigades and not‐for‐profit organizations as well as voter turnout. We test the hypotheses derived from extant research using aggregate data collected from Portuguese cities and discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on local civic participation.

Collective Civic Petitions in Urban Neighborhoods: A Comparative Study between Two Different-Tier Chinese Cities

“…As indicated through the numerical analysis, targeted petitions were the most numerous type of petition in the two cities. At the city scale, the increased number and proportion of targeted petitions suggests that urban neighborhoods have been the main civic territories for raising civic engagements in both cities [36,53]. This is similar to the findings of some western empirical studies about civic development and socioeconomic changes with regard to urban neighborhoods' size, and the effects of increasing residential density caused through rapid urbanization [53].…”

“…The significant spatial concentrations in the inner core areas and inner fringe areas can be related to general housing developments within Chinese urban planning practices since the 1980s [39,42]. As indicated in the city master plans of the two cities, urban neighborhoods were progressively developed initially in urban inner core areas, and then in urban inner fringe areas [47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. Cumulatively, in the two cities, those radical urban renewals resulted in the relative concentration of urban neighborhoods in urban inner core areas and inner fringe areas [42].…”

“…Cumulatively, in the two cities, those radical urban renewals resulted in the relative concentration of urban neighborhoods in urban inner core areas and inner fringe areas [42]. As indicated in latest city master plans of the two cities, the residential areas are the main urban spaces in the urban inner spaces (including inner core areas and inner fringe areas), and account for 42.1% and 38.7% of population in Nanjing and Huai'an respectively [50,53]. However, despite these similar spatial concentrations, there also existed certain differences.…”

“…At the city scale, the increased number and proportion of targeted petitions suggests that urban neighborhoods have been the main civic territories for raising civic engagements in both cities [36,53]. This is similar to the findings of some western empirical studies about civic development and socioeconomic changes with regard to urban neighborhoods' size, and the effects of increasing residential density caused through rapid urbanization [53]. At the individual urban neighborhood scale, the growing trend of appealing collective civic petitions witnessed a consistent decrease in 'single' and 'non-civic' petitions.…”

Decentralising Unitary Governments Without a Map, or Learning How to Salsa When We Only Know How to Waltz

“…In the US, this model has gained a great deal of currency, and has been demonstrated to predict policy choices at the local level with a much better level of explanatory power than the previous "internal" models. It has also formed the basis for a number of current models that are being tested increasingly in contexts outside of the US (Tavares & Carr, 2013;Feiock, Francis & Kassekert, 2010), with some degree of success.…”