Place-Making, Partisanship, and Potent Potables: The Surprising Issues That Scramble Nonpartisan Politics

• In Event: 40821 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13. Placing Politics

Abstract

Place-making as a political practice depends on the buy-in and cooperation of mayors, city council members, and other elected officials. Increasingly, there are dominant narratives about how partisanship influences place-making: Democrats, despite their ideological commitments, have created unlivable and workable cities; Republicans committed to a set of conservative values have paved the way for capital development while standing in the way of other community innovations. However, in most cities across the United States (approximately 75%), place-making is intimately bound up in nonpartisanship. Nonpartisanship is an institutional practice—a set of rules about how elections are conducted, and local bodies are organized—and a cultural practice—a way of knowing and discussing local issues that attempts to frame them outside of partisan debate. This paper examines how place-making practices—debates about development, neighborhood policies, tourism, restaurants and bars, etc.—interact with partisanship on nonpartisan city councils. By examining city council minutes and video recordings of fourteen small cities across Wisconsin, this paper demonstrates how place-making policies often cut across partisan lines. In some cases, this reveals a possibility for cooperation and local development; in other cases, this reflects the potential for significant resistance that combines Democratic and Republican politicians.

Author

• Benjamin Hirsch Witkovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison