This article brings a contribution to the debate on the Statute of the City (SC), linking it to different approaches and underlying cleavages of the crisis of modernity. The article introduces relevant epistemological and theoretical aspects that have been neglected in this debate and briefly compares three specialized urban law approaches to articles of the SC, showing absence of consensus and the need for a comprehensive reflexion. To conclude, what is in dispute in the EC debate are the resources for the understanding of the challenges of its implementation, which involves especially three factors: the comparative approach to the views of urban law specialists; an inter and trans-disciplinary approach, with the contribution of the complexity paradigm; a democratic-participative perspective, with public policies oriented by the theories and experiences of the third way and the formation of social capital.
Statute of the City; paradigm of complexity; democratic-participative perspective
