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Urbanisation is changing landscapes, social relations and everyday lives across the globe. But urbanisation is also changing the ways democracy is understood and practiced. Nevertheless, the relation between urbanisation and democracy remains conceptually and empirically underdeveloped. Our aim in this paper is to provide a novel way of thinking about this relationship that addresses two limitations in current debates. First, there is the dominant view that just as urbanisation dissolves the actual, material city it also dissolves the city as a democratic project. We challenge this understanding, arguing that across the globe claims for and forms of urban collective self-rule signal that the city retains democratic significance in a very specific sense: as an object of practice and thought the city is a source and stake of the urban demos. Second, there is a tendency to either restrict the question of democracy to state-centred forms of political action or to place democracy completely outside the realm of the state. We argue however that urbanisation unsettles seemingly fixed boundaries between the state and society and thus opens the possibility of weaving together a new democratic fabric encompassing both. In addressing these two strands of debate together, we outline a democratic politics of urbanisation that shifts perspectives from institutions to practices, from jurisdictional scales to spaces of collective urban life. Seeing democracy like a city, we argue, foregrounds a way to reimagine and to re-locate democracy in the everyday lives of urbanites.

This article draws novel links between 'anti-politics', austerity and a political horizon centred on the urban. Research on anti-politics often invokes a binary understanding of a politics of and within the state and an anti-politics at a distance from or hostile towards the state. This article argues that in the context of austerity, this binary loses traction. Austerity has intensified the transformation towards networked forms of governance within which the state becomes a more hybrid entity of contradictory ideals and practices. Austerity not only calls into question the legitimacy of formal politics because of its devastating social outcomes, it also disaggregates the political authority of the state and opens up a particularly urban terrain of politics. We capture this development by examining the intersections between the local state and the urban field of politics. Looking across the struggles against austerity in Europe, and focusing in more detail on housing politics in Berlin, we assert that the urban is important not only as a setting (as typically argued) but also as the basis for a different rationality of political action in and against austerity. In the context of austerity struggles, state authority becomes ever more contingent and other, more urban, forms of politics advance. In sum, the article contributes to a spatial reading of (anti-)politics against austerity, points to the de-centring of the state in transformative political projects and emphasizes the analytical purchase of a distinctly urban perspective on contemporary politics in Europe.

This article responds to both ongoing urban practices and strands of urban theory by arguing for a (re-)turn to the everyday as a means of thinking about antagonism and political possibility. We examine how the everyday might be conceived politically and wonder what it is about the current conjuncture that is fuelling the reimagining of the political possibility of the urban. We develop the category of urban everyday politics to capture the politicised everyday practices observable in our towns and cities: collective, organised and strategic practices that articulate a political antagonism embedded in, but breaking with, urban everyday life through altering socio-spatial relations. While we make no empirical claims about the current impact of this form of politics, we assert the political potential of viewing the everyday as a source, stake and site of dissensus in current urban conditions. Politicising the urban everyday offers, we conclude, a strategy for transformative politics, one in which the state recedes from view, micropolitical action is transcended and democratic possibilities lie in the transformation of the urban here and now.

This article draws novel links between 'anti-politics', austerity and a political horizon centred on the urban. Research on anti-politics often invokes a binary understanding of a politics of and within the state and an anti-politics at a distance from or hostile towards the state. This article argues that in the context of austerity, this binary loses traction. Austerity has intensified the transformation towards networked forms of governance within which the state becomes a more hybrid entity of contradictory ideals and practices. Austerity not only calls into question the legitimacy of formal politics because of its devastating social outcomes, it also disaggregates the political authority of the state and opens up a particularly urban terrain of politics. We capture this development by examining the intersections between the local state and the urban field of politics. Looking across the struggles against austerity in Europe, and focusing in more detail on housing politics in Berlin, we assert that the urban is important not only as a setting (as typically argued) but also as the basis for a different rationality of political action in and against austerity. In the context of austerity struggles, state authority becomes ever more contingent and other, more urban, forms of politics advance. In sum, the article contributes to a spatial reading of (anti-)politics against austerity, points to the de-centring of the state in transformative political projects and emphasizes the analytical purchase of a distinctly urban perspective on contemporary politics in Europe.

Privatization of urban space is increasing, the needs of the global economy push out those of ordinary citizens and austerity increasingly provides the horizons of urban politics. On these grounds, one can quite easily understand the appeal of the post-political city thesis as articulated by urbanist Erik Swyngedouw. His post-political city is largely devoid of proper politics, governed instead through managerial consensus-driven political systems. In this chapter, we consider the implications of this approach for the field of urban studies. We assert that closer inspection of the post-political city thesis shows a restricting account of contemporary urban politics, unhelpful for thinking about the dynamics of (de)politicization in urban contexts. Our main argument is that work within the frame of the post-political city avoids or is inconsistent about the "urban", while being very prescriptive about politics. This is problematic because the "post-political city" has become something of a label for the lack of politics in and about the city. We conclude the piece by proposing ways of realigning the field of enquiry. Our fundamental concern throughout is epistemological: when we look at the city through the post-political lens, what happens to politics?

What happens to urban politics when examined through the post-political lens? In our response to Derickson, Dikec and Swyngedouw we reassert the key elements of our critique: the prescriptive understanding of politics and the inconsistent use of the urban. We close this debate with some thoughts on how we might urbanise the political.

This commentary reflects on the influence of the post-political critique on urban studies. In this literature (e.g. Swyngedouw, 2014), the default position of contemporary democracies is post-politics – the truly political is only rare, random and radical. The 'post-political trap' refers to the intuitively convincing, yet ultimately confining account it provides of contemporary urban governance. We identify three shortcomings. First, the binary understanding of the real political/politics as police negates the in-betweenness and contingency of actually existing urban politics. By so doing, secondly, political agency is reduced to the heroic and anti-heroic. Thus, the plurality of political agency in the urban sphere and multi-faceted forms of power lose their political quality. Third, the perceived omnipotence of the post-political order actually diminishes the possibilities of the urban as a political space of resistance and emancipation. On these grounds we argue not for a rejection of the notion of the post-political per se but for a more differentiated approach, one more alert to the contingencies of the political and of depoliticisation in the urban realm.

Mit dem Errichten neuer Architektur vergewissert sich eine (unsichere) Gesellschaft ihrer Handlungsfähigkeit. Beschädigte oder obsolete Architektur wird meist renoviert oder entfernt; Ruinen werden als Zeichen von Gefahr verstanden. Doch damit werden die Möglichkeiten zur Darstellung von Zeitlichkeit in der Architektur unnötigerweise stark limitiert und auch die politische Dimension ausgeblendet. Dabei kann Scheitern in der Architektur produktive Möglichkeitsräume aufspannen.

Die Fachstelle "Alter" des Kantons Aargau hat das Institut Urban Landscape der Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften (ZHAW) im November 2016 beauftragt, Informationen über das Wohnen im Alter für die Gemeinden in Form eines Berichts zusammenzustellen. Der Bericht soll eine Systematisierung von Wohnformen im Alter umfassen, erfolgreiche Beispiele präsentieren und ein besonderes Augenmerk auf die Rolle der Gemeinden bei der Planung, Erstellung und/oder dem Betrieb von Wohnformen für Menschen im Alter legen. Der Bericht ist folgendermassen aufgebaut: Im ersten Kapitel skizzieren wir die aktuelle gesellschaftliche Ausgangslage für die Erstellung und den Betrieb von Wohnformen für ältere Personen. Danach folgt ein Systematisierungsvorschlag von Wohnformen. Dabei ist zu beachten, dass die Unterschiede zwischen den Wohnformen in der Realität oftmals fliessend sind. Speziell im Bereich der gemeinschaftlich ausgerichteten privaten und institutionellen Wohnformen mit Betreuung zeigt sich die Grenze zwischen ambulanter und stationärer Pflege zunehmend durchlässig. Anhand von drei Beispielen wollen wir den Systematisierungsvorschlag und die Durchlässigkeit zwischen den Wohnformen veranschaulichen. Im Anschluss beschreiben wir die relevanten baurechtlichen, finanziellen und betrieblichen Rahmenbedingungen für das Wohnen im Alter bevor wir dann unseren Blick auf die Rolle der Gemeinden werfen. Im abschliessenden Kapitel gehen wir auf weiterführende Themen ein. Zwischen dem privaten Wohnen im angestammten Umfeld auf der einen Seite und dem Eintritt in ein klassisches Pflegeheim auf der anderen Seite haben sich in den letzten Jahren eine Vielzahl von neuen Wohnformen für ältere Menschen etabliert. Damit löst sich die einstmals klar gezogene Grenze zwischen privater Wohnform mit ambulanter Pflege und dem Alters- oder Pflegeheim, in dem die Pflege stationär zur Verfügung steht, zunehmend auf. Diese Entwicklung entspricht zwar einer Alterspolitik, die die Individualität, Autonomie und Selbstbestimmung der betagten Menschen anerkennt. Sie steht aber im Widerspruch zur bestehenden (finanziellen) Organisation des Schweizer Versorgungssystems, das scharf zwischen Betreuung und Pflege und stationärem und ambulanten Wohnen unterscheidet. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass die Entwicklung im Bereich der intermediären Strukturen dynamisch weitergeht. Die Herausforderung für Gemeinden besteht nun darin, diese Veränderungen in der Altersversorgung zu erkennen, mit Blick auf die regionalen Gegebenheiten und gemeinsam mit den bestehenden Akteuren in der Altersversorgung angemessene und zukunftsfähige Modelle zu ermöglichen und diese den älteren Menschen stufengerecht zu kommunizieren.

This commentary reflects on the influence of the post-political critique on urban studies. In this literature (e.g. Swyngedouw, 2014), the default position of contemporary democracies is post-politics – the truly political is only rare, random and radical. The 'post-political trap' refers to the intuitively convincing, yet ultimately confining account it provides of contemporary urban governance. We identify three shortcomings. First, the binary understanding of the real political/politics as police negates the in-betweenness and contingency of actually existing urban politics. By so doing, secondly, political agency is reduced to the heroic and anti-heroic. Thus, the plurality of political agency in the urban sphere and multi-faceted forms of power lose their political quality. Third, the perceived omnipotence of the post-political order actually diminishes the possibilities of the urban as a political space of resistance and emancipation. On these grounds we argue not for a rejection of the notion of the post-political per se but for a more differentiated approach, one more alert to the contingencies of the political and of depoliticisation in the urban realm.

What happens to urban politics when examined through the post-political lens? In our response to Derickson, Dikec and Swyngedouw we reassert the key elements of our critique: the prescriptive understanding of politics and the inconsistent use of the urban. We close this debate with some thoughts on how we might urbanise the political.

Der Beitrag nimmt die kürzlich durchgeführte Dritte Nationale Föderalismuskonferenz der Schweiz zum Anlass, um die aktuelle wissenschaftliche Debatte um den eidgenössischen Föderalismus darzustellen. Seitdem die Neugestaltung des Finanz- und Lastenausgleichs in Kraft getreten ist, stehen neue Themen im Zentrum der Diskussion: die Agglomerationspolitik, die Rolle der Kantone in der Außenpolitik und im Rahmen der Beziehungen zur EU, Territorialreformen auf kommunaler Ebene sowie der Horizontal- und der Steuerföderalismus. Angesichts neuer Herausforderungen hat sich der Schweizer Föderalismus gewandelt. Dieser Wandel beschränkte sich allerdings meist auf die intergouvernementalen Beziehungen.

This article analyses the up-scaling of territorial governance in the two Swiss agglomerations of Zurich and Bern. It focuses on the evolution, over the last half century, of the governance schemes established to manage a territorial network crucial to the functional integration of urban regions in Switzerland: urban public transport. Historical data is used to demonstrate that a shift in the territorial scope of urban public transport management has indeed taken place during the time period under scrutiny. However, specific political configurations as well as infrastructural settings have led to remarkable differences in the territorial management of urban public transport between the two agglomerations. This is especially striking, given the similarities of the initial governance scheme, as well as the dynamics of territorial restructuring that are comparable across the two places. We conclude that, while an up-scaling of territorial governance has occurred in both agglomerations, the different trajectories are the result of a process in which infrastructural pre-conditions combine with political conflicts to produce diverging forms of area-wide territorial governance.

AbstractIn the last decades, municipal mergers have been one major element of local government reforms in Switzerland and beyond. In this article, we describe and analyze the political effects of this development. We use a quasi‐experimental setting to test the impact of municipal mergers on electoral participation. We find that in merged municipalities, the decrease in turnout is significantly stronger than in non‐merged municipalities. Further, the effect is more pronounced in relatively small localities. There is a temporal dimension to this effect—that is, turnout drops mainly in the first election after the first merger, but not so much after the second or third merger. Hence, the study provides a skeptical yet differentiated perspective on the democratic consequences of municipal mergers and points to further research avenues to develop a more comprehensive understanding of local government consolidation.