Cities in Federal Constitutional Theory
Talk on “Victims and Villains: Cities and the environment on the constitutional stage”.
0:00:00 - Introduction - Elisabeth Alber, Eurac Research, Institute for Comparative Federalism
Speakers:
0:04:23 - Rebecca Nelson, Associate Professor of the Melbourne Law School, is the winner of the Federal Scholar 2020 edition. Her research focuses on environmental and natural resources law and policy, with an emphasis on empirical research and practical solutions.
0:32:30 - Erika Arban is Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies, Melbourne Law School, and Contract Professor at the University of Milan, Statale. She is the co-convenor of the IACL research group New Frontiers of Federalism and comment editor of the review Comparative Constitutional Studies.
0:45:02 - Q&A
book:
Cities in Federal Constitutional Theory
Edited by Erika Arban, published in August 2022
The city as an independent subject of theorisation and investigation is an underexamined area of constitutional law. Although in recent years scholars have started to explore the legal dimension and place of urban areas, the study of cities as constitutional subjects remains very new, with a solid theoretical foundation yet to be established.
Against this backdrop of general under-theorisation of cities in constitutional law and federalism, Cities in Federal Constitutional Theory seeks to offer a fresh theoretical account of cities as federalism subjects, exploring the increased importance they have acquired from political, economic, socio-cultural, and demographic perspectives.
This volume directly addresses the relationship between cities, federalism, and localism (or subsidiarity), and responds to concerns about the scarcity of innovative theoretical discussion on the topic, while at the same time redefining accepted concepts like subsidiarity. Bringing together theoretical reflections on the city from established scholars, this edited collection significantly enriches the field of federal constitutional theory.
Book chapter: Victims and Villains: Cities and the environment on the constitutional stage, Nelson
Human influence on the environment is now widely considered to be so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The rapidly accelerating pace, scale and impact of urbanization makes it a critical driver of that influence, so much so that some prefer the term ‘Astycene’-an era altered and characterized by the ‘astos’, or urban dweller. The widespread adoption of modern constitutional environmental rights provisions speaks to the scale and severity of contemporary environmental threats in general. However, the centrality of cities in causing and experiencing environmental threats, and the corresponding constitutional implications, remain substantively unaddressed by constitutions and their scholars. This chapter applies an environmental lens to the key questions of whether constitutions should recognize cities, and what any such recognition should seek to accomplish. It uses the metaphor of the constitutional stage, first describing the environmental backdrop to that stage in physical and institutional terms. It then argues that although cities can act in the role of both environmental victim and villain, recognizing them in constitutions would help address important environmental problems in both situations. Both situations also support constitutionalizing intergovernmental coordination mechanisms that can adapt to changing circumstances-in other words, action on stage that unfolds using dialogues and improvisation, rather than the ‘constitutional soliloquys’ of exclusive powers and rigid constitutional formulations. Finally, the chapter explores factors relevant to the casting call-determining what counts as a city for the purposes of an environmentally informed constitutional narrative.