Mark Purcell’s Recapturing Democracy argues that neoliberal urbanisation can be challenged not merely by diagnosing its injustices, but by cultivating democratic urban futures capable of displacing growth-first common sense. His analysis begins from the claim that cities have been increasingly governed through competitiveness, property valorisation, deregulation, entrepreneurial governance and public assistance to capital, a process he names neoliberalization rather than neoliberalism to stress its uneven, contested and unfinished character. Against this, Purcell develops not a rigid democratic blueprint but a set of democratic attitudes: habitual, oppositional dispositions through which movements can resist the reduction of urban life to exchange value. The case-study synthesis centres on Seattle and Los Angeles, where struggles over redevelopment, environmental cleanup, infrastructure and secession reveal both the dangers and possibilities of democratic mobilisation. Particularly significant is the Seattle Duwamish cleanup, where environmentalists, Indigenous peoples, neighbourhood residents, justice activists and small businesses contest technocratic governance and demand meaningful participation in the remaking of polluted urban space. Purcell’s conclusion is hopeful without being naïve: neoliberalization is hegemonic, but never total; its contradictions continually open doors for organised resistance. Democracy, therefore, must be spatial, urban and insurgent, reclaiming the city as a collective project rather than a terrain for capital accumulation.
