How Covid Captures, or Repoliticizes the 'Right to the City'

The Covid crisis reminds us of the need for participation in public space as democratic principle and also adds complex new twists to this 'right to the city'. Urban scholars and activists have advanced a wide spectrum of norms, claims and movements for economic, cultural or political justice against inequalities, exclusion and privatization of public space. Covid not only highlights again the problems and opportunities of cities, their differentiated local contexts and complex global interconnectedness but the measures also imply farreaching restrictions of public space. The state thus appears to be taking back control of public life, while reenforcing tendencies toward retreat to privacy by new appeals to social solidarity based in physical distance. Whereas previously the critical urban concern was directed against neoliberal market forces decreasing public autority, now the right to the city may be invoked to protect democratic rule against authoritarian shifts and deepening inequalities. However, with Covid protesters taking the streets of cities and populist politicians seizing the public debate, the initially progressive notion is now claimed and reinterpreted by a movement that is dominated by right nationalists. Although everyday life in cities still challenges average citizens' to develop diverse creative coping practices, the urban notion is at risk of losing its critical potential for addressing the social consenquences of differentiated affecteness. Yet, for example, in the case of Vienna's municipal elections, otherwise local matters of technocratic urban planning have gained importance for public politics at a national level, thus increasing awareness of the democratic functions of urban space. The various mutually interacting pro- and anti-urban claims also highlighted the multifacetted functions of public space for democratic crisis management, so that urban diversity gained potential for turning polarisation into plural contentions. The new regulatory and social practices thus open a contentious field of claims-making which connect the specific places of everyday interactions with the public political sphere of democratic governance. To counter authoritarian and right-populist tendencies, this political mobilisation of the city constitutes the current moment as crucial for critical experts to contribute toward democratic deliberation in face of complex uncertainties.