Democracy Needs Sidewalks
Why dialogue is a core city building material
Most city plans talk about housing, transport, jobs, and “public realm,” but they rarely talk about democracy.
Democracy shouldn’t only be something we do every few years at the ballot box. It should be a daily practice. Cities either make that practice easier or suffocate it.
This post makes one claim: democracy and dialogue are essential ingredients of city building. If we design cities that reduce encounters, filter speech and lock decisions inside expert systems, we lose vibrant streets and civic life as we know them.
“Never have the potential consequences of architecture been greater, and never has the political sensibility of architecture been less.”
—Richard Sennett
Rights on paper aren’t enough
Planning culture often starts with rights: the right to shelter, the right to the city, the right to participate.
But academic planner, Claudia Basta, makes a salient point: a right can exist without being enforced in real life (Basta, 2016).
“The right to shelter does not mean that society enforces this right concretely.”
— Claudia Basta
That is why the “capabilities” lens matters here. It shifts the question from what people are said to have to what people are actually able to do and be (Basta, 2016).
In city terms, that means:
“public consultation exists,” and so does real power to shape outcomes
“public space exists” and so does the real ability to speak, stay, and be heard
“access” is agency
Democracy is a capability the city must support.
How cities disable democracy
Richard Sennett argues that modern cities are designed and used in ways that strangle democratic possibility, especially by destroying the everyday places where encounter and discourse can happen (Sennett, 1981, p.25).
The irony is sharp: modern life may offer more democratic potential than older social orders did (less village control, less rigid family role control), but we often don’t know how to use that freedom in democratic Western societies (Sennett, 1981, p.25).
So, we end up with:
more freedom in theory
fewer forums for democratic practice
Sennett is also blunt about professional planning: it can become bureaucratic protection that isolates urban users from power over their own lives (Sennett, 1981).
Even when participation happens, the built result can still reflect dominant power, and this is especially true when it becomes a fixed object, designed for one purpose, hard to revise as a place’s history changes (Sennett, 1981).
That “fixed-function” mindset matters because democracy depends on evolution: arguments change, needs shift, publics re-form.
When the city can’t change with its people, it trains people to stop trying.
Dialogue needs a place and the modern city often refuses to provide it
Sennett points to something many of us feel but rarely name: modern spaces are often built to prevent real discourse.
He contrasts Aristotle’s idea of civic talk, defined as spontaneous speech free from top-down control, with contemporary settings where information flows can be cut off the moment they become uncomfortable (Sennett, 1981, p.56).
“Flows of information… can be terminated the moment they’re painful.”
—Richard Sennett
Pain in the form of discomfort, disagreement and tension becomes the regulator of speech.
The control of this is an issue at the heart of democracy.
The fear of otherness is a democratic design problem
Sennett treats the desire for isolation as a civic danger. Fear of contact with people unlike you is both personal and political (Sennett, 1981, p. 65–66).
And, if people do not want discourse with others, the democratic project collapses into parallel lives and managed distance.
Cities either reinforce that fear (through segregation and filtering) or challenge it (through contact and shared forums).
This is why “comfort” is never neutral. A city that makes it easy to avoid one another may also make it easy to avoid responsibility.
Why sidewalks matter more than we admit
If democracy is a daily practice, then it needs daily settings.
Sidewalks, corners, benches, stoops, small shops, libraries, transit stops. These places do quiet democratic work. They normalize co-presence. They make difference ordinary. They create low-stakes chances to see and speak.
Sennett even argues that individuality itself develops through street stimulation, through exposure to “dissonant forces” (Sennett, 1981, p.127).
In other words: the street is more than a backdrop for democracy. It helps produce democratic selves.
Planning as learning, not blueprint
John Friedmann’s “social learning” approach offers a practical way forward: it argues for a shift from blueprint planning toward planning with people, grounded in mutual learning in specific settings (Friedmann, 1981, p.1–5).
He frames this kind of planning as a politicized practice that often emerges “from below,” especially when people organize around housing, poverty, environment, consumer rights—real life conditions (Friedmann, 1981, p. 2–5).
This approach also challenges a common hierarchy:
where expert knowledge counts as “evidence”
where lived knowledge gets dismissed as “anecdote”
Democratic city building needs both.
Collaboration is not automatically just
Patsy Healey’s work is useful here because it refuses an easy optimism that Friedmann suggests. Collaborative processes can enable learning and coordination; however, they can also reproduce old power through agenda control, institutional routines and the unspoken authority of “how things are done” (Healey, 2003, pp.106–114).
Healey also demonstrates how planning rules can produce distributive injustice: place-quality protections often work best where private investment is active, while poorer areas reliant on public resources can see quality neglected (Healey, 2003, p.103–105)
So whether you consulted or not does not matter. The real questions are:
Who set the agenda?
Who got the invite?
Whose knowledge counted?
Who had leverage when trade-offs got real?
A concrete democratic upgrade: Citizens’ Assemblies
DemocracyNext’s 2024 report offers one of the clearest actionable tools: Citizens’ Assemblies selected by sortition, which is lottery plus stratification, to create a broadly representative group that can learn, deliberate and recommend policy (MacDonald-Nelson et al., 2024, pp.9–11).
“A Citizens’ Assembly is a group of people… selected through sortition… broadly representative.”
—MacDonald-Nelson et al
They also stress accountability: a formal public response to recommendations and regular progress reports after the assembly (MacDonald-Nelson et al., 2024).
This matters because cities are facing deeply complex problems, from housing affordability, to climate resilience, inequality and mobility, where thin consultation and late-stage engagement repeatedly fail (MacDonald-Nelson et al., 2024)
Citizens’ Assemblies are not a magic fix. But they can turn “engagement” into structured agency.
What it means to build democracy into the city
If democracy is dialogue, then city building must protect the conditions of dialogue.
Across these sources, a practical checklist emerges:
Measure capabilities, not slogans. What can people actually do and influence? (Basta, 2016)
Make space for spontaneous speech. Don’t over-script public life (Sennett, 1981).
Design for change. Avoid fixed single-purpose forms that can’t evolve with local history (Sennett, 1981).
Multiply everyday contact points. Democracy grows in repeated, ordinary co-presence (Sennett, 1981).
Treat planning as mutual learning. Combine theoretical and lived knowledge in practice (Friedmann, 1981).
Design collaboration with safeguards. Watch for capture, tokenism, and subtle exclusion (Healey, 2003).
Institutionalize representative deliberation. Build Citizens’ Assemblies into major decisions, with accountability (MacDonald-Nelson et al., 2024)
Democracy is fragile, and it doesn’t survive on good intentions. It survives when the city makes dialogue hard to avoid and safe enough to attempt.
Subscriber note
Cities aren’t just places we live in. They are systems that shape what we can notice, reach, argue about, and change.
In this newsletter, I follow a simple thread: the built environment is never neutral. Architecture, planning and digital tools can widen civic life, or work to narrow it.
My posts move between theory and practice, including topics like:
Democracy in the city: where everyday dialogue is supported (or designed out)
Feminist perspectives on space: whose comfort is prioritized, whose labour is hidden, whose safety is assumed
Urbanism and planning culture: how agendas form, who gets invited, what “participation” really means
GIS + spatial analysis: what maps reveal, what they conceal, and how evidence gets political
3D modelling and representation: how images, models, and metrics can persuade—or exclude
Streets, thresholds, and public life: the small spatial details that decide whether encounter is possible
Sometimes a post will be a close reading of a concept. Sometimes it will be a case study, a map, a model, a method, or a question I can’t shake.
If you’re here because you care about how cities distribute power, you’re in the right place.
If you want, hit reply and tell me what you’re working on—or a city decision you think deserves a sharper lens. I read every message.