This commentary offers a critical assessment of Ross Beveridge and Phillippe Koch's article “Seeing democracy like a city.” While there is much we can learn from their analysis and perspective, in the end, it offers only marginal resistance against the colossal structural forces quashing the democratic emancipation of the urban, leaving us with little hope for systemic and comprehensive democratic reconstruction. Only through a mass politics designed to capture and wield state-centered democratic power can we hope to realize broader system change in late-stage, neoliberal capitalist regimes.
