Fixing new municipalism discretely and discreetly. Power, participation, and the possibilities of progressive regimes

The article examines the difficulty of progressive urban regimes to implement concrete and substantial policies. Looking at the reuse of three vacant public spaces in the city of Padova (Italy), it questions how the issues of capacity to act and citizen participation affect the promotion of a new-municipalist agenda. We show that: first, progressive urbanism is very unlikely to happen without an incumbency providing the capacity to implement radical objectives; and second, despite changes in discourse, already existing practices persist and coexist with new, progressive ones through institutional fixes. The case of Padova provides evidence of two “participation fixes” through which its new-municipalist government compensated for, although not resolving, the lack of coalitional and relational governing resources: a discrete implementation of the outcomes of participatory processes and; a discreet use of participatory processes as means to avoid conflict.