Unwinding Privatization: Cities and the Restoration of Public Power (Urban and Industrial Environments)

How remunicipalization can be implemented to restructure urban governance.

Across North America, Europe, and the Global South, public services such as water and energy that were once privatized have returned to public sector functions—an intriguing new development known as remunicipalization. Unwinding Privatization, edited by Alba Alexander, Larry Bennett, Evan McKenzie, and Michael Pagano, explores the sources, scale, and implications of transferring ownership of public services and discusses its prospective impact on cities and metropolitan regions.

At the heart of each service transfer is a crucial reconfiguration of power and responsibility—who gets to participate in making central decisions and which incentives drive these decisions. This collection by leading urban scholars presents alternating perspectives on these shifts in governance, framing remunicipalization as both a pragmatic response to the inefficiencies of privatization and as a democratic resurgence driven by public demands for accountability and sustainability. Drawing on timely and geographically wide-ranging research, the editors assess the highly nuanced task of “unwinding privatization” and, in doing so, how we can achieve an optimal relationship of private to public power.

Alba Alexander is Clinical Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is a coeditor of Private Metropolis.

Evan McKenzie is Professor of Political Science and a member of the Law School faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is the author of Privatopia and Beyond Privatopia.

Larry Bennett is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at DePaul University and a coeditor of the Temple University Press book series, Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy. His books include Reclaiming Modernity and the coedited Neoliberal Chicago.

Michael A. Pagano is Dean Emeritus of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs and Founding Director of the Government Finance Research Center at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is a former coeditor of Urban Affairs Review, the coauthor and coeditor of 11 books on urban issues, and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.