Urban Citizenship

Abstract

The urban context is relevant to and constitutive of the enactment and performance of citizenship. Urban citizenship is also entangled with issues of differentiated rights, scale, politics of identity, and bottom-up agency. The intrinsically unequal nature of urban citizenship means that it is inherently politicized and contested as reflected in the historical development of urban social movements and agendas promoting “the right to the city.” Urban citizenship is not always a top-down provision but can be self-made and performative. In this vein, urban citizenship is constituted by an active process of making and doing, such as through active citizenship, urban informality, insurgent urbanism, and do-it-yourself urbanism.