What goes underexplored in Bauböck’s commentary is the relationship of citizenship to sovereignty. Alexander Aleinikoff claims urban citizenship is a useful concept only to the extent that urban areas possess legal authority—some form of sovereignty—to rule by and for themselves.
Along with several other contributors to this Symposium (e.g., Hase and Lenard), Avigail Eisenberg is skeptical that enhancing urban democracy will help meet the global challenges we confront today.
Urbanisation has radically transformed the way that people live, but a corresponding legal and political shift has not taken place. In North America and most of Europe, the power of cities is derived from the sovereignty of the state. Many cities do not have access to the revenue needed to provide for the social welfare and infrastructure requirements of residents.
Contrary to what Warren Magnusson suggests, Luicy Pedroza finds that non-citizen local enfranchisement is highly important.
The urban citizenship discussed in this Forum is not at all new in the Western world; it has a history of at least a thousand years, and when we include Ancient Athens, even much more. This history is relevant because it suggests the scope, as well as the limitations of such alternatives.
In this contribution Johanna Hase highlights two aspects: First, she argues that the framing in terms of urban rather than local citizenship is not helpful, and possibly even counter-productive, for the purpose of constructing the new citizenship narrative. And second, she questions the relation between emancipating urban citizenship from nationality, on the one hand, and the growing competences of local polities, on the other hand.
Stadtluft macht frei, or city air makes you free, was a proverb in the Middle Ages. It referred to a legal principle according to which runaway serfs were to become free after living one year in a city. Today, many scholars suggest that urban citizenship still has powerful emancipatory effects.
I will take Rainer Bauböck's closing words as my point of departure and offer an answer that is less predictive and normative, and more empirical. I agree with his assertion that we need a robust urban citizenship. I would suggest that we already have some important examples of urban citizenship that challenge and complement national citizenship in crucial ways and it is important to shine a light on those examples to chart a course forward.
How can ‘staged urbanism’ provide spaces of urban citizenship? Under what conditions can urban citizenship “contribute to overall democratic integration within and beyond nation-states”?
Earlier commentaries in this online symposium highlighted various aspects of urban citizenship, such as the exclusion of non-urban populations (Lenard) or the conundrum of multilevel frames of legal authority (van Zeben). Harald Bauder suggests that urban citizenship can be an important mechanism to create inclusive communities.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters