The dismantling of equity oriented urban policies has led to a call for a 'just city' agenda where policies are directed towards equity, diversity and democracy rather than growth and cultural protectionism. This paper presents a first assessment of political support for the 'just city' and investigates its conditioning factors, building on a European survey of city mayors. We find a strong association with leftist ideology, but also enabling conditions for the support of conservative mayors. The positive predisposition of leftist mayors, however, wains with increasing dependence on EU funding. The exploratory study thus opens new avenues for further research.

Comparative research on welfare and planning has traditionally been based on broadly defined typologies of national welfare state and planning systems, thereby neglecting the role of local "cultures" that help sustain and redevelop underlying institutions and practices. Drawing on a European-wide survey of city mayors, we explore how well the established typologies are reproduced in local welfare and planning cultures, as reflected in mayoral attitudes, and whether there are systematic variations of welfare and planning cultures even within the same country. The findings suggest that nationally based categories of welfare regimes and planning systems do not necessarily correspond with mayors' preferences for "urban intervention" in service delivery, housing provision, or planning. Local specificities, including permeability to the influence of European institutions and policies, may in fact have a significant impact on mayors' attitudes in these fields, possibly creating new local understandings as well as pressures for reforming national welfare and planning systems. These conclusions strengthen the argument that "local cultures" are presenting a challenge to national typologies of planning and welfare, and are important elements to take into account when exploring the evolution of urban policies at the local level.

How do actors involved in decision-making around urban planning relate to devolution? How do they perceive external forces influencing their cities, and how can the interventions they make be better oriented towards tackling inequalities? We reflect on these questions with data from interviews conducted with urban leaders and housing and development policy stakeholders in the second cities of Birmingham, UK, and Lyon, France. We compare narratives and assess how they relate to the concept of spatial justice in differing contexts of devolution. Drawing from findings in two cities with distinct governance structures, we uncover common issues with neoliberal, growth-oriented mindsets among key actors, despite contrasting rhetoric around social justice. We contend that there is thus a need to define mechanisms for making devolution more attentive to inequalities. This could be achieved through incorporating the concept of spatial justice into devolution strategies. We further argue that, while autonomy to make decisions is an important aspect of devolution, this autonomy needs to be operationalised within an appropriate constellation, including a progressive political-economic culture, sufficient bureaucratic authority and resources, and an active and informed citizenry. As such, devolution is a two-way process of having powers devolved from above and building capacity from below to make use of these powers effectively. We conclude by reflecting critically on the potential of existing strategies in the two contexts to overcome social inequalities and realise the aspirations of “just devolution.”

In Switzerland, cannabis has been illegal since 1951. Recently, decriminalizing cannabis has been discussed in the Federal Assembly. Developments in other countries received increased attention and stimulated further discussions on reforms. Regulatory approaches in other countries vary widely, but firm scientific evidence on the effects of instruments is still scarce. Some Swiss cities launched initiatives to conduct pilot trials with cannabis in order to find evidence-based alternatives to the status quo, which is marked by various inconsistencies. An initial request by the city of Bern to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) was rejected in 2017 due to lack of legal basis, but contributed to the establishment of an experimental article for pilot trials with cannabis in the following years. The Ordinance on pilot trials in accordance with the Narcotics Act (BetmPV) allows cantons, municipalities, universities and other organizations to conduct pilot trials to gain scientific knowledge about alternative approaches to regulate the non-medical use of cannabis. The ordinance lists various conditions that must be met before an application is approved by the FOPH. With a view to future pilot trials, the FOPH has mandated Prof. Daniel Kubler and his team from the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich (IPZ) to develop a research agenda focusing on new legal approaches to cannabis regulation. This agenda aims to serve as a guideline for the generation of scientific evidence related not only to the cannabis pilot trials, but also with respect to additional questions related to cannabis regulation, and to reflect on research coordination and funding.

In an international collaboration of planners, geographers and political scientists from the Universities of Birmingham and Zurich in 2017, we set out to explore the implications of the ideal of ‘the just city’ (Fainstein 2010) for evaluating and guiding urban planning and for identifying its democratic underpinnings by means of a comparative study of three cities across Europe. The scene was nicely set, with Fainstein’s principles for planning seeking to defend and further equity, enhance recognition of diversity, as well as encourage citizen participation against a global tendency towards policies that only benefit the interests of global capital. More generally, Fainstein refers to the capabilities approach, putting individuals’ opportunities with regard to life chances at centre stage. Complicating things, however, are the possible tensions between the dimensions of equity, diversity and democratic participation, leading Fainstein to prioritise the substantial dimensions of equity and diversity over the procedural dimension of democracy. In particular, she considers that participatory arrangements do not per se lead to equitable policies (notin-my-backyard attitudes, resistance to social mixing by homeowner associations, etc.), and participatory planning is therefore valued only as far as it contributes to equity and diversity. Her scepticism about the ability of democratic institutions more broadly to adequately represent various minorities and to forge meaningful coalitions (Fainstein 2010: 29, 52) leads her to direct her book at planners rather than politicians, where planners are to use participatory arrangements to press for egalitarian and inclusive solutions (Fainstein 2010: 173, 181). In this paper, we take Fainstein’s observations as a starting point but depart from her approach in two important ways. First, Fainstein’s planning principles seem to be intended primarily for the evaluation of single upcoming development projects and general social policies rather than for the guidance of citywide plans responding to spatial developments at the scale of the city or city region. Locational choices are already taken as a given, while spatially differential outcomes of general policies are not considered. Accordingly, the planning principles give little advice as to where a planning intervention is actually needed. In our approach, therefore, we take a decidedly spatial perspective, where urban planning primarily responds to citywide patterns of ‘spatial injustice’ (Soja 2009: 3), understood as lasting spatial structures of privilege and disadvantage that are being politically and societally produced and reproduced. Secondly, while sympathetic to Fainstein’s view that recognition of diversity does not preclude the existence of rather homogeneous neighbourhoods, we worry that accepting current concentrations of disadvantaged people in many city regions across the world does not serve their recognition but rather undermines their capabilities in terms of access to education and opportunities to reach advantageous social positions. This is why, in our approach to the just city, we see a strong role of urban planning in not only limiting further segregation, but proactively counteracting the already existing patterns of spatial injustice, positioning ourselves closer to the ‘equity planning’ approach (Krumholz, Forester 1990).1 In the following sections, we will summarise Fainstein’s principles for just city planning, followed by our spatial critique and an alternative framework for planning inspired by Soja, before we turn to key insights from our case studies on the selected domains of housing and urban renewal in the cities of Birmingham, Lyon and Zurich – cities coming from different traditions of planning, housing and local government. While the study also included extensive interviews with key stakeholders in all three cities, we here focus on summarising local efforts in urban renewal and housing policies in the context of ongoing processes of segregation and exclusion. We discuss how housing policies in Birmingham keep reproducing concentrations of deprivation, how Zurich’s reliance on non-profit housing associations limits its capacity to steer social mixing in the neighbourhoods, and how metropolitan efforts for spatial equity in Lyon is enhanced by the institutional setup and planning regulations in France. Against this Dr. Oliver Dlabac Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich

Le plurilinguisme de la Confederation est un facteur crucial pour la cohesion nationale. En theorie, les quatre communautes linguistiques doivent etre representees de facon equitable au sein de l’administration federale. De meme, chaque employe de la Confederation a le droit de travailler dans la langue officielle de son choix. Mais en depit de ces deux objectifs tres clairs, le fonctionnement plurilingue des autorites federales ne va pas de soi. Les minorites linguistiques sont sous-representees dans de nombreuses unites administratives, notamment aux postes les plus eleves de la hierarchie. Et pour les italophones, le libre choix de la langue de travail est souvent une illusion. Si le principe d’une administration federale reellement plurilingue fait quasiment l’unanimite, les obstacles a sa realisation sont donc nombreux et difficiles a surmonter. A partir d’une analyse fine de la situation, en particulier dans ses developpements recents, cet ouvrage propose une reflexion documentee sur le fonctionnement de l’administration publique dans un pays multilingue comme la Suisse.

In The Just City, Fainstein (2010) proposes principles for directing and evaluating urban planning with regard to the ‘just city’. Equity and a fair distribution of costs and benefits from public policy are central to her concept of social justice, while expanding it with considerations on diversity and democracy. The just city, in her view, may comprise of relatively homogeneous neighbourhoods, as long as their boundaries remain porous and further segregation and large-scale displacement are contained. Although Fainstein mentions the problem of involuntary concentrations of disadvantaged population groups and unequal spatial access to opportunities, her planning principles seem to be more concerned about securing social benefits from given projects and general policies, rather than devising pro-active spatial strategies directed towards equal access to opportunities on a citywide scale. In this paper, we propose an alternative, spatialized approach to the just city and just planning policies. Following Soja (2010), we assert that space and spatial processes have a central role in producing and reproducing social injustices in terms of access to opportunities. Accordingly, we consider trends of ‘ghettoization’ as a major source of social injustice, where we understand ghettos as areas with high concentrations of disadvantaged people, potentially leading to social marginalization, overburdened schools and a general lack of life chances. ‘Gentrification’ marks another source of injustice, where previously neglected areas become areas of privilege, depriving displaced residents and others from newly created opportunities. Based on the cases of Birmingham and Zurich, cities with contrasting planning traditions, we offer a discussion of housing and urban renewal policies against the background of city-specific patterns of ghettoization and gentrification. Focusing on the 1990s onwards, we find that the continued marketization of housing and urban renewal efforts in Birmingham have done little to counteract ghettoization, while the public reliance on housing associations and neighbourhood upgrading in Zurich have allowed for exclusionary practices and displacement. For both cities, however, the framework can serve for devising spatially just planning policies. Social justice in cities, we believe, is aided by a spatial understanding of social injustice and corresponding, spatially informed, citywide planning strategies.

This article investigates the link between passive (descriptive) and active (substantive) representation in public bureaucracies. Previous studies on this topic mostly focused on the US context, where race and gender are the most salient aspects of bureaucratic representation. In Switzerland, representation of the various cultural communities in the federal bureaucracy is the most salient issue. Active representation is operationalized as administrators’ preferences for minority origin, as well as for skills in minority languages when selecting candidates in personnel recruitment processes. We use a structural equation model to analyze individual-level data from a survey of administrators in the Swiss federal civil service. Findings are that passive representation fosters active representation not only at the level of individual bureaucrats, but also at the level of the agencies as the main bureaucratic work environment. Moreover, we find that effects of passive on active representation are not direct but mediated by administrators’ sensitivity to issues related to minority representation. Sensitivity to minority conditions therefore appears as the main microfoundation for active representation of minority interest, and as a core explanatory factor for active representation outside of demographic congruence.

This paper takes up the concept of the ‘Just City’ (Fainstein 2010) and follows the conceptual orientation within an own ongoing comparative case study for Birmingham, Lyon and Zurich, trying to identify the 'democratic foundations of the Just City' (Carpenter, Dlabac, and Zwicky 2015; Dlabac 2014). Socially just urban planning orientations, it is hypothesised, are favoured by corresponding national welfare state regimes and planning systems, by Europeanization processes and by a strong and cooperative mayoral leadership that favours the participation of the broader public above a more restrictive cooperation with the local business community. The second round of the European mayor's survey allows assessing the mayor’s agenda with regard to social justice: refusal of market solutions for attending housing needs; insistence on public delivery of services; and a strong adherence to integrated urban projects. Whereas welfare state regimes deliver little explanatory power, we find indications for the role of national planning systems and Europeanization processes. Considerable variation, however, remains at the level of the cities after accounting for cross-national variation. Besides a leftist political orientation, community-based urban leaders clearly distinguish themselves from business-oriented leaders.

Secondo l’ordinanza federale sulle lingue, in particolare la classe dirigenziale dell’amministrazione federale dovrebbe rispecchiare in modo “adeguato” le proporzioni della rappresentanza dei gruppi linguistici. A questo proposito, il contributo considera le autovalutazioni delle competenze linguistiche da parte dei dirigenti appartenenti alle classe salariali 32-38, partendo dalla loro lingua principale. Viene inoltre analizzata la lingua in cui originariamente sono stati redatti i decreti legislativi, un ulteriore indicatore per misurare quanto e se il plurilinguismo è reale negli uffici federali.

Die angemessene Vertretung der Sprachgemeinschaften und die Forderung der Mehrsprachigkeit in der eidgenossischen Bundesverwaltung sind Themen von staatspolitischem und offentlichem Interesse. Dabei steht insbesondere die Personalrekrutierung im Zentrum, mittels welcher die sprachliche Vielfalt und Verstandigung beim Bund gewahrleistet werden soll. Sie findet im Spannungsfeld zwischen staatspolitischen Reprasentativitats- und Gleichberechtigungsprinzipien sowie unternehmerischen Effizienz- und Leistungsvorgaben statt. Im Buch wird aufgezeigt, wie sich die Forderung der Mehrsprachigkeit in der Bundesverwaltung entwickelt hat, welche Massnahmen ergriffen worden sind und wo diese angesichts der vielfaltigen Anforderungen bei der Personalrekrutierung an Grenzen stossen. Bemerkenswert sind dabei die zur Verfugung stehenden Daten: Einerseits konnten umfangreiche Statistiken des Bundes ausgewertet werden. Andererseits erhielten die Forschenden die Moglichkeit, konkrete Rekrutierungsprozesse zu beobachten und sensible Daten zu erheben, wie sie in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Literatur nur selten zur Verfugung stehen.