A common-based approach to urban policymaking: self-government, co-production and popular control in the Citizen Asset Programme in Barcelona

Over the last decade, common-inspired public policies enabling citizens to self-manage resources and services have unevenly proliferated across European cities. Broadly speaking, these policies entail local governments supporting citizens in the self-management of urban resources and services. This article refers to this trend as a “common-based approach to urban policy-making”. Several authors have pointed to the democratising capacity of the common-based approach to urban policymaking. In their discourse, the promotion of direct democracy through citizens' self-government seems to imply that this approach is more democratic in nature. However, as political scientists working in the field of co-production have argued, enabling citizens to self-manage urban resources and services cannot be considered as a democratising practice per se. In this article we aim to analyse whether and how a common-based approach to urban policymaking is a democratising policy approach. The article qualitatively analyses a paradigmatic case of a common-based approach to urban policymaking, the Patrimoni Ciutadà [Citizen Asset] programme, which was promoted by the municipalist government of Barcelona en Comú in Barcelona. It aims to foster citizens’ self-management of local public facilities and spaces. The article contends that the Citizen Asset programme is a democratising policy approach. However, democratisation is not exclusively given by the implementation of self-government but by incorporating modalities of co-production and popular control into the whole policy process, making it "non-appropriable".