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River contracts (RCs) are voluntary agreements between stakeholders for managing water bodies and involve participatory, evidence‐based action plans. Increasingly, European authorities recognise that effective water policies require bottom‐up, inclusive decision‐making. Despite widely held assumptions about the benefits of including stakeholders in river basin management and encouraging participatory mechanisms of decision‐making, the growing rhetoric about the need for public engagement implies that this 'new' paradigm of water management remains filled with ambiguities. Adopting ethnographic methods and drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources, this paper analyses three RCs in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy. These case studies reveal the potential for RCs as tools not only for water management, but also for increasing stakeholder involvement through place‐making activities conceived as potential hydrophilic encounters. In order to understand whether RCs contribute to a fluvial sense of place, we looked at the effects of top‐down versus participatory processes. We asked whether RCs were considered participatory processes designed to achieve a co‐designed outcome or simply territorial management projects that objectify the river as something to be developed. We found that ratifying an RC was not, in itself, proof of an effective process; rather the nature and quality of an RC was determined by the degree and type of participation. We contend that participatory events and sharing information are not sufficient in themselves to achieve the active involvement of all stakeholders. We argue that the best framework for enabling place‐making and enhancing a sense of place is to develop RCs within a process that includes a high degree of participation. This enables citizens to shift from simply being passive recipients of plans to becoming effective territorial actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the unfolding of the right to the city through a focus on urban mobility. We analyse the way urban social movements (USMs), which play a crucial role in shaping the right to the city, frame their struggles in relation to mobility. We argue that their use of the concept of the ‘right to mobility’ has two meanings. First, the concept gives USMs a framing discourse to advocate and shape transport policy changes. Second, it enables USMs to bring together different actors with different urban agendas. We base this argument on a study of Rio de Janeiro, a paradigmatic case of mobility-based claims of the right to the city. Looking at the practice of a protest-oriented and a knowledge-oriented USMs that contest the Rio de Janeiro's mobility crisis, we outline an agenda for academics and practitioners willing to work towards the construction of sustainable and just mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]