What do we get if we bring together the interdisciplinary field of legal pluralism with the equally interdisciplinary field of urban studies? It is with this question in mind that the special issue editors of this issue—Danielle Chevalier, Michiel Stapper, and Carolien Jacobs—launched a call for papers. The outcome of the call is this special issue, titled Legal pluralism in the urban realm. It consists of seven articles, which explore a wide range of urban and peri-urban settings across the world; ranging from Botswana and Brazil to European settings in Brussels, Barcelona, Budapest, and the Netherlands. Drawing on rich empirical research, the authors unpack the multiple normative orders that shape the urban realm and interrogate the different meanings different actors attach to legal plurality, the multifarious ways in which it impacts on everyday ordering of the city, the perceptions of state and non-state actors of the plurality of norms, and the way in which this plurality is navigated.
Traditionally, legal pluralism researchers often focus on the interplay between state law and customary law. This was often most prominent in rural areas. Meanwhile, the focus has been expanded: many researchers have added a global lens to their studies, and pay attention to the local-global interactions. In 2019 for instance, our journal published a special issue on Cities and the contestation of human rights between the global and the local, with Barbara Oomen and Elif Durmus as special issue editors (vol 51: 2). Some of the papers in this special issue are equally concerned with the interplay between the global and the local in terms of human rights, others add even more complexity to the legally plural landscape of the urban realm. The contributions in this special issue show even more complexity, for instance by zooming in on local regulations and on the complexity within different levels and jurisdictions of the state that interact in the urban setting that is on the one hand hyperregulated, but at the same time also provides a lot of space for non-state actors to carve out their own normative orders.
With more and more people living in urban settings across the world, it is relevant to critically investigate the normative orders that are imposed on them, the way these orders take shape, the interactions between them, and the way in which a plurality of norms impacts on the everyday live of urban citizens. This is what the contributions in this special issue do. Legal pluralism is very much alive in the city, and it is worth exploring it.