The gifted city: Setting a research agenda for philanthropy and urban governance

Abstract

With billions worth of funding to city-based projects, urban dwellers and city leaders the world over, philanthropy is no small matter. It might shape the form, politics and direction of urban development worldwide, yet little discussion of its role is present in urban studies. In this commentary, we call for urban scholars and practitioners to become more explicitly conversant in its investment dynamics in cities and their impact on urban governance. We highlight a two-pronged research agenda focused on institutions and individuals. First, we argue that we need to understand the impact of philanthropic institutions not just generally on cities but specifically on urban governance. Second, we call for nuanced attention to the philanthropy of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and its relationship to urban policymaking and wealth redistribution in cities. Third, we highlight the value of a more ‘global urban’ outlook onto the landscape of philanthropic funding in cities, starting with greater attention to philanthropic practices beyond the Global North. We conclude by sketching possible empirical steps towards an action research agenda, whilst underlining the necessary reflexivity that urban scholars should have in their positioning vis-a-vis philanthropy and its engagement in urban academia.

Post‐pandemic cities: An urban lexicon of accelerations/decelerations

“…Key questions here are how to take advantage of private‐sector, philanthropic and civic governance capacity gains while maintaining critical evaluation of, first, the agenda, norms and practices their involvement instils in urban governance; and second, the spatial and social differentiations that inhere across the attentions and agenda of non‐state actors. For example, as philanthropies gain deepening traction in urban governance, critical attention will be needed to how their approaches to addressing urban inequalities and exclusions are entangled with logics of data‐driven governance (with related surveillance capabilities) and infused with logics of marketisation and commodification, potentially pre‐filtering the solution sets and governance logics put into play in individual cities (Fuentenebro & Acuto, 2021). In parallel, COVID has palpably shifted the dial on expectations that wider citizen movements—such as those promoting urban commoning, participatory governance, community development and progressive urban social change—be given wider legitimacy as ‘co‐creators‘of local governance, not least because of community‐based mobilisations that addressed critical gaps in state service and support provision through the pandemic.…”

What is the relationship between philanthropy, materiality and public space?

“…There is less attention to place‐as‐locale; ‘the structured micro‐sociological content of place’, that is, the environment in which we perform everyday routines and interpersonal associations (Agnew, 1987, pp.25–28). Moreover, Fuentenebro and Acuto (2022) underline the need for scholars to explore how neo‐liberal, entrepreneurial philanthropy affects governing in urban contexts, but they also call for a focus on ‘its impact on the city as a place’ (ibid., p.1950, my emphasis) i . However, the exploration of the physical, tangible legacies of philanthropy, from buildings, to landscapes, to monuments, remains the preserve of architects, architectural historians, and visual and material culture scholars (Agarez, 2019; Jovanovich & Renn, 2019; Kaji‐O’Grady, 2021; Prizeman, 2016; van Slyck, 1995).…”

Innovating urban governance: A research agenda

“…Constituting urban governance innovation as a political project: There is a need for careful and critical engagement with the epistemic community that has been central to framing urban governance innovation as a political project. The actors constituting this community operate as intentional change agents with a potentially powerful influence in pre-filtering urban governance logics, practices and solution-sets (Fuentenebro and Acuto, 2021), and in casting particular problems as suited to governance at the urban scale. Attention is needed to analyse how this framing is drawn upon, translated, and contextually and relationally recombined in particular urban settings.…”

“…Scholl and Kemp, 2016) to programs enacted by national governments across national territories (e.g. Lee and Ma, 2020;Whicher, 2021), often relating to one another through global and regional networks (Ferreira and Botero, 2020) And, despite limited attention to the spatiality of governance innovation, this scope offers empirical and conceptual resources for geographies of governance critically concerned, for example, with the agenda-setting of globally operating philanthropically sponsored urban governance innovations (Fuentenebro and Acuto, 2021;Montero, 2020), seeking to leverage the progressive possibilities of local urban or trans-locally networked innovatory efforts (Phelps and Miao, 2020;Thompson et al, 2020) or interested in excavating the role of the urban as a site and scale in governing complex socioenvironmental challenges (Bulkeley et al, 2016;M c Guirk et al, 2021b). urban governance One final significant question that benefits from the dialogue we propose concerns the extent to which the emergent landscape discussed above demands consideration as more than a set of stand-alone interventions, instead, following Bulkeley et al (2016), signalling a broader shift in the nature of urban governance.…”