Abstract

The question of citizenship is becoming one of the central social and political problems, where sovereignty is being challenged by globalisation and militarisation. The old model of citizenship is no longer valid in the contemporary reality of mass migrations and ethnic, religious and cultural integration. Krzysztof Nawratek revives the socio-political potential of the city as a tool for social change. He proposes to establish the city’s own sovereignty by introducing a new type of multiple and flexible city citizenship. City as a Political Idea combines reflection on urban planning, architecture, politics and society. It questions reasons for the existence of contemporary cities as well as their future.
…Nawratek offers the English reader an understanding of Belfast as well as Porto Alegre in Brazil, Manchester as well as Riga. He calls on research which the late Kevin Lynch carried out in Boston sixty years ago, when he observed how Bostonians plotted their city and how their mental map related to the way they inhabited and ‘used’ it. That such a readable form helps the inhabitant to feel at home in a city is too well-attested to require comment. It is, in a way, the guarantee that the social capital of trust and interdependence can flourish in it…
Joseph Rykwert