1/4 The Danger Zone: Charter Cities, Citizenship, and Social Justice verfassungsblog.de/the-danger-zone-charter-cities-citizenship-and-social-justice/ Margaret Kohn This article belongs to the debate » Urban Citizenship 26 Januar 2020 Urbanisation has radically transformed the way that people live, but a corresponding legal and political shift has not taken place. In North America and most of Europe, the power of cities is derived from the sovereignty of the state. Many cities do not have access to the revenue needed to provide for the social welfare and infrastructure requirements of residents. In Toronto, a city of 2.6 million people with only two subway lines, the mayor proposed to finance the expansion of public transit by levying a modest toll on two city roads, but the Province vetoed the idea. Two years later, Provincial Premier Doug Ford decided to punish political opponents by restructuring the city government during the middle of an election campaign. Torontonians were outraged, but there was nothing they could do. In response, proponents of local democracy have called for a constitutional amendment to create “Charter Cities” with more power. The debate over Charter Cities provides a lens for thinking about cities and citizenship. Rainer Bauböck asks whether urbanisation requires a restructuring of political institutions, transforming cities into the dominant arenas of politics, democracy and citizenship. He admits some ambivalence, and I share this ambivalence. Like Gargiulo and Piccoli, I focus on distinctive concerns about the difficulty of realising social justice at the local level. In my response, I draw on the record of home rule in the United States, particularly California, where Charter Cities are protected in the state constitution. Cities have long exercised power over land use and zoning, and they have frequently used this power to exclude needy outsiders (Davis and Morrow 2006). They do this by passing local ordinances that prevent the construction of public and low-income housing. Home- voters fear that the presence of low-income residents will diminish their quality of life and increase the crime rate (Fischel 2009). Home-voters are motivated by their economic interest in low tax rates, and they use the power of local government to exclude poorer people with costly needs. Local autonomy (“home-rule”) can create an inverted version of the tragedy of the commons. Instead of over-exploitation of the commons, zoning laws ensure that land is under-utilised, keeping home prices high and poor residents out. We see this most vividly in Silicon Valley, where some towns have added ten new jobs for every new housing unit built