Whose city? What politics? Contentious and non-contentious spaces on Colorado’s Front Range

Abstract

Drawing on research from Colorado's Front Range (the Denver/Boulder metropolitan area), this paper examines the validity of the 'post-political' hypothesis for explaining contentiousness and non-contentiousness in urban space. Examining major urban redevelopment efforts in Denver and a controversy over homeless people sleeping in public space in Boulder, we suggest that the literature on post-politics too narrowly circumscribes the realm of political action and in so doing loses analytical force and risks misunderstanding the nature of political engagement in the city. By contrast, a less circumscribed, more supple definition of politics allows for a better understanding of how the question of 'Whose City?'-who the city is for -is always up for grabs. The appearance of post-political consensus, when it occurs, is itself a political achievement, the making of a hegemony, not an explanation.

Mega-project meltdown: Post-politics, neoliberal urban regeneration and Valencia’s fiscal crisis

“…As some authors have argued, this includes everyday practices and the 'micro-politics of resistance' (Mitchell et al, 2014;Larner, 2015). However, it is also worth exploring how effectively any specific form of re-politicisation can contribute to undermining the established social order and to establishing a different one.…”

Contesting the ‘Active’ in active citizenship: youth activism in Cape Town, South Africa

“…Politics -even political goals to which we do not subscribe -still matter, and acting on those politics is in itself political (Mitchell, et al, 2014). To ignore that possibility is to assume away the agency of young people and to overlook that which critical scholars generally laud.…”

“…Furthermore, arguments about the ways that the modes of participation foster consent and discipline dissensus assume that techniques that channel participation also channel political views. In so doing, they overlook the extent to which the decision to support government policies is itself a political act (Mitchell, et al, 2014).…”

Asĺ No (Not Like This): Resisting Postpolitics on Mexico City's Avenida Chapultepec

“…As an analytical framework, the ‘postpolitical thesis’ (Mitchell et al ., ) has fallen foul of critics on several grounds, not least in Anglophone geography. McCarthy () points to elements of Eurocentricity at work in the development of the very idea of postpolitics, countering Swyngedouw's () argument that the non‐politics of climate present a clear material example of the postpolitical condition by contrasting Swyngedouw's observations with the white‐hot reality of the US political ‘debates’ daily waged over climate, from the increasingly garish denials of presidential candidates to the hard‐fought battles over light‐bulb regulations.…”