ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the informal global-urban policymaking. Benjamin Barber identifies as a 'civic infrastructure', and envisages the Parliament formalizing the various existing informal inter-city networks. He takes up an argument on cities as sites for policy innovation and outlines a case for a more global and relational understanding of the policymaking process. The urban policymaking world seems to be in almost constant motion. The focus on relations between cities and the work involved in making urban policy acknowledges the extent to which urban politics, by its very nature, incorporates actors and interests that are often understood to be located elsewhere. As such, urban policymaking must be understood as both relational and territorial, as both in motion and simultaneously fixed, or embedded in place. Contemporary urban policymaking, at all scales, therefore involves the constant scanning of the policymaking landscape, professional publications, the media, websites, and word of mouth for ready-made, off-the-shelf policies and best practices that can be applied locally.
