Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America?s greatest architects, once said that, ?Form follows function ? that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union?. This remark by Wright is one of those statements to which we would certainly grant our approval. The physical form of our cities should indeed join ?in a spiritual union? the functions human beings expect them to perform. Truth be told, this has been the case for most of the functions a city is expected to perform. In most of the developed countries, cities are privileged places in terms of means of transportation, housing, health care, education, and shopping facilities. Not to mention economically related activities, with office space being one of the most important defining features of modern metropolis. There is, however, one function that the city is supposed to perform but that contemporary practices of city-building are utterly denying; we refer to the rights of citizenship, the exercise of which makes us autonomous and free citizens. If form and function are indeed to be joined in a spiritual union, as Wright suggests, then the civic form should meet halfway with civic participation. This is the insight we wish to pursue in the course of the research project we hereby submit, mobilizing theoretical and methodological resources from several scientific disciplines, namely political science and political theory, urban sociology and political geography. <br />A recent promising line of research conciliates Weber and Simmel?s concern with the normative dimensions of urban experience with Chicago?s ecological theory?s concern with the spatial features and evolution tendencies of urban areas. We refer to the critical urban studies agenda being developed by political scientists and theorists (e.g., James Tong and Susan Bickford), political geographers (e.g., David Harvey and Richard Peet), and urban sociologists (e.g., Manuel Castells and Claude S. Fischer). Our own perspective is somewhat indebted to this variant of critical theory insofar it emphasizes the link between civic form and civic participation, that is, the relation between the architectonic or spatial configuration of urban areas (civic form) and the political behaviour and civic values of the citizenry living in those areas.