Cultivating the Fourth Sector: Active Citizenship and Governance in the Urban Change Process

The rapid generalization of a community based on sharing, collaboration, co-decision-making, and cooperation has given greater visibility to a range of activities and even social mechanisms in a paradigmatic transition toward what is becoming known as the fourth sector. Active citizenship and the forms it has adopted fall into this new category. The renewed dynamism of civil society, led through properly organized citizen groups and inorganic and conjunctural social movements, can be interpreted in a number of ways, but perhaps that which fits best is the increasing delegitimization of formal power or, at least, the need to deepen the democratic system in an urban context. It is this dynamism that seems to transform collaboration as an emerging form of democracy, thus inscribing it within the set of dynamics that characterize the “collaborative society.” All these urban transformation mechanisms become condensed in the transfer from a context of government, i.e., a formal system of articulation of actors in the public sphere, to a context of governance, i.e., an informal system, with variable geometry both in terms of scale and the nature of the actors involved. This is oftentimes a troubled process because it means an effective redistribution of power, something that is almost never peaceful or easy. The discussion of the emergence of these new values is reflected in the narrative for the formation of, and the activity carried out by, the “Caracol da Penha” movement. The related challenge was based around a demand that a green space be built instead of a car park, which is equipped to serve not only the locals but also the entire city of Lisbon, Portugal. Popular mobilization, the reversal of the decision by the Lisbon City Council, the use of participatory budget mechanisms, and the ability to produce and organize information and communicate it, to name just a few of the many other aspects, make this case emblematic for many other participatory processes and appear to have been a learning ground for all actors involved. This process of reversing a unilateral decision already taken by a local power, thanks to the structured and dynamic mobilization of the local community, makes it possible to see in practice how the change of values in the power system is tending toward a more collaborative democracy in an urban context.