Federalism and Subsidiarity: NOMOS LV

9. Cities and Federalism

259 9 CITIES AND FEDERALISM DANIEL WEINSTOCK 1. Introduction In most countries, cities are constitutional nonentities.1 That is, they exist at the pleasure of political entities that do have constitutional standing, be they substate entities like provinces, länder, or U.S. states, or sovereign states. Their boundaries can be redrawn at will, and what powers they hold are entrusted to them by the political entities upon which their existence depends. Coincidentally or not, cities have largely been ignored by political philosophers. Normative theorizing about cities in recent decades has been left up to sociologists,2 legal scholars,3 political scientists ,4 geographers,5 and planners.6 These are both surprising facts. After all, the this-worldly realization of many of the values about which political philosophers have written at great length depends upon the way in which cities are organized. Conclusions about how to organize cities so as to realize these values can moreover not simply be inferred from the abstract arguments that they have tended to engage in. Yet, as can plainly be seen from the work of those few political philosophers who have attempted to connect abstract theorizing with questions of urban policy, applying the abstract conclusions of political philosophy to urban policy contexts is not merely an administrative exercise. Difficult and fascinating philosophical questions emerge in the application process.7 260 Daniel Weinstock The relative political weakness of cities might also come as something of a surprise given that, first, more and more of the world’s population inhabits cities, and that trend shows no signs of abating , and second, decisions about the functioning of cities arguably make more of a difference to the everyday lives of urban dwellers than do decisions made at the level of the province or the state. There are signs that political philosophers are slowly beginning to rise to the challenge of addressing the normative challenges that are posed at the level of the city. For example, theorists such as Clarissa Hayward have sought to unearth the challenges posed for the realization of principles of equality by zoning decisions at the level of cities that may at first glance seem innocuous.8 Iris Marion Young offered sustained reflection on the distinctive goods realized in city life.9 Thad Williamson has interrogated the phenomenon of urban sprawl by applying dominant theories of justice to it.10 Rainer Bauböck has suggested normatively attractive reforms that might give real substance to the notion of urban citizenship.11 Surprisingly, none of these theorists have asked what would at first glance appear to be a more philosophically primitive question to do with the status of the city as a political entity. What kind of thing is the city, from the point of view of political philosophy and of the categories and concepts that it has made familiar to us in thinking about nation-states? Is the relative neglect of cities, both constitutionally and in the works of political philosophers, an oversight, one that should be corrected if political philosophy is to speak meaningfully to the political problems faced by modern humans? Or do cities simply lack some of the features that political entities should have in order to “count,” constitutionally speaking? It is to this range of questions that I will devote this chapter. I want to make at least plausible the suggestion that cities should possess greater constitutional standing than they presently do. More specifically, I will argue that theories of federalism, and federal arrangements in the real world, ought to include them. Whether we view federalism as motivated by considerations to do with subsidiarity, or by a concern with collective self-determination , I will argue that cities possess properties that qualify them for inclusion within federal arrangements. I will proceed as follows. The first two sections will engage in some needed conceptual ground clearing. I will first suggest that Cities and Federalism 261 considerations of subsidiarity and of self-determination represent alternative rather than complementary grounds for federalism , in ways that render the task of showing how cities might fit into federal arrangements more complex than might seem at first glance. I will then make some brief remarks about what falls within the extension of the term “city.” The substance of the argument will then be developed in the following two sections, which will show, first, why federations governed by a concern with subsidiarity ought to include cities, and second...