Beyond the local trap: new municipalism and the rise of the fearless cities

The Fearless Cities summit, coordinated by Barcelona en Comú in June 2017, marked the first global gathering of the nascent ‘new municipalist’ movement. Responding to the ‘imperative that geographers engage critically and creatively with the way localism is being articulated’ (Featherstone et al. 2012: 181), this paper argues that the new municipalist initiatives are developing urban political strategies that successfully avoid the Local Trap. Rather than essentialising cities as inherently progressive or democratic, the municipal is instead becoming framed as a ‘strategic front’ for developing a transformative politics of scale. Given this critical awareness, this nascent movement demonstrates how local loyalties can be mobilized as part of a progressive scalar strategy without falling into the trap of a ‘particular localism’. What remains to be seen is whether these initiatives are able to develop a variegated scalar strategy of transformation that retains the democratic essence that underpins them.