Stage 3: Care resources and reforms

💛 Local Governments and the Financing of Care Policies

Verónica Serafini Geoghegan (Latindadd and Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya (CADEP))

Expert in local governance and feminist economist Verónica Serafini Geoghegan distills the opportunities for local and national governments to reorganize financing to support the development of caring cities and territories and a broader shift towards collective co-responsibility of caring tasks. Positioning the expenditure on care policies as an investment with high returns, the piece underscores how care must be considered as a human right, and therefore supported thoroughly by national and international institutions, not merely as a policy option. (This contribution is also available: en español)

💛 Localizing AI for Local and Regional Governments

Michelangelo Secchi (Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano and Eudema.net)

With artificial intelligence tools having become publicly accessible, local and regional governments are tasked with harnessing any possible benefits, such as valuing tacit and marginalized knowledge, while mitigating the risks of unethical design and use. The current uses and risks of AI in local and regional governments’ operations are outlined while methods to address regulatory, digital capital and democratic gaps are laid out. A central paradox is addressed: if caring governance means paying attention to exceptions, context and variety, how can the tools of AI, which tend to generalize, fit in? What resources do local governments need to realize caring intelligence?

💛 Caring Cities and Plural Multilateralism: Two Key Forces to Transform a World in Crisis

Lorena Zárate and Kelly Agopyan (Global Platform for the Right to the City)

To address the present day’s undeniably interconnected global and local crises, a visionary re-imagining of international relations is necessary. GPR2C proposes, in the name of implementing care equally across the world, Plural Multilateralism. Founded on feminist municipalism and amplifying marginalized voices, this “community-driven multilateralism” encourages cities to advance more just, safer cities, and to promote world peace, by collaborating with residents and bottom-up initiatives, and with one another.

💛 Independent Journalism as Care: Why Collective Action is Needed to Enable Journalism as Essential Infrastructure for Local Democracies

Bethia Pearson (City St George’s University of London, UK) and Sarah Anne Ganter (Simon Fraser University, Canada)

A journalism of care is founded on fulfilling the role of journalism in connecting citizens to resources and reflecting their voices. Noting how modern journalism can discourage proximity to ordinary people’s opinions in order to maintain a façade of neutrality, Bethia Pearson and Sarah Anne Ganter’s analysis of a journalism of care underlines journalism’s key role in democracy. By allowing independent journalism to thrive regardless of market dynamics and local oligopolies, national governments and other actors can support the development of communicative local territories where trust is high between constituents and local government.

💛 Connecting Care and Devolution in Africa

Amy Weimann, Edgar Pieterse and Warren Smit (African Centre for Cities)

African local governments are limited in investing in care due to reduced fiscal, legal and institutional capacities. Through four country case studies, the contribution illustrates the impacts of devolution and decentralization in the context of unique subnational dynamics in African countries. Through several local care initiatives ranging from ecological infrastructure to early childhood development strategies, the contribution analyses a variety of inter-governmental arrangements and evaluates their impact on care and community development. To advance care infrastructure, the authors call for substantive devolution and investment, as well as for the policy agenda of Social and Solidarity Economies being embedded.

💛 The Agenda of Recentralization and its Impact on Local Basic Services and Care Systems

Ricardo Martinez, Marta Galceran-Vercher and Samuel Hernández (CIDOB - Barcelona Centre for International Affairs)

Through the case studies of Mexico and Tunisia, decentralization and recentralization processes are compared and their impact on care is analyzed in this contribution. Emphasizing that it is essential to have democratic subnational and municipal governments backed by sustainable financial, legal, administrative and political architectures, the contribution further underlines how central reforms can constrain or bolster LRGs’ ability to provide sustainable infrastructures of care through proximity.

💛 Mapping Care: Data Infrastructures for Caring Cities and Territories

Cecilia Tinonin, PhD (Statistician and Research and Data Lead, Women’s Economic Empowerment Section, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific)

From creating and using care maps to institutionalizing data officer positions, LRGs and national governments can elaborate data systems that enable the emergence of caring cities and territories. For example, through capacity development, decentralization, data-sharing arrangements and sustainable financing. That data as an infrastructure of care is made evident: governing with care means understanding the people, the territory, and pre-existing policies, to make evidence-based decisions for collective wellbeing.

💛 Care and Equality: Rethinking Measurement and Monitoring for Local Governance

Caterina Arciprete, Federico Ciani, Andrea Ferrannini and Maria Nannini (ARCO — Action Research for CO-Development, Fondazione PIN)

Care-sensitive monitoring can be a transformative pillar of local governance. Through case studies of Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Barcelona, ARCO’s contribution illustrates how adopting techniques such as care-mapping and a normative shift towards institutionalized monitoring allows LRGs to better design their policies and reconfigure their priorities in the transition towards resilient and just territories. Noting the limits of GDP monitoring, its invisibilisation of key caring practices, and stance towards perpetual economic growth in a world of finite resources, ARCO offers a toolkit of alternative care-sensitive measurement techniques for LRGs.

💛 Multilevel Governance of Care: Repairing Inequalities from Local to National

Paola Jirón (Instituto de la Vivienda, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad de Chile) and Macarena Rodríguez Vergara (Universidad de Chile)

Which national institutional arrangements can allow for caring cities and territories to thrive? How can we build “care societies” with local governments as co-creators? This comparative study analyzes the different approaches to multilevel governance of care across regions: from institutionalizing the right to care in Uruguay to upscaling caring city projects in the Republic of Korea. While inspirational and thought-provoking, the contribution also draws attention to the perils of fiscal austerity and the need to ensure equal systems of care within countries.

💛 For Local Care Systems Rooted in Workers' Rights

Sandra van Niekerk and Daria Cibrario (Public Services International)

Care infrastructures are run by and maintained by workers. Upholding and advancing the legal rights, working and living conditions of workers is essential to build caring societies. Reflecting on pathways such as remunicipalization, institutionalizing the right to care and direct initiatives for workers in the care sector, the contribution brings home how LRGs, as employers, must lead by example and support all public workers, holistically in delivering care at the local level.

💛 [Coming soon…]

Ricard Garcia and Marc Vilalta (Faculty of Law, Universitat de Barcelona)

This contribution, rooted in the context of Spanish cities, takes a comparative approach towards the juridical definitions, or lack thereof, of care, and the current pathways: establishing care as a human right under a legal definition and/or as a public service under an administrative definition. Considering how multi-level governance and caring governance intersect, the authors elaborate on how responsibilities for care can be distributed, across levels of decentralized government and across sectors of society, ending in key recommendations for actors engaged in caring societies.