scholarly journals Justice and the Spatial Imagination

10.1068/a3467 ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (10) ◽  
pp. 1785-1805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafa Dikeç
Keyword(s):  
Urban Policy ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Theoretical Underpinning ◽  
Moral Ground ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Solidarity ◽  
Spatial Imagination ◽  
The City

I attempt in this paper to conceptualize a notion of spatial justice in order to point to the dialectical relationship between (in)justice and spatiality, and to the role that spatialization plays in the production and reproduction of domination and repression. I argue that the city provides a productive ground for the formation of a spatially informed ethics of political solidarity against domination and repression. A ‘triad’ is articulated to inform such politics, which brings together three notions: the spatial dialectics of injustice, the right to the city, and the right to difference. The notion of spatial justice is employed as a theoretical underpinning to avoid abusive interpretations of Lefebvrian rights in a liberal framework of individual rights. The case of French urban policy is used for illustrative purposes. Finally, the notion of égaliberté is introduced as a moral ground on which the triad may be defended.

Gentrification, Displacement, and the Right to the City

2019 ◽  
pp. 168-194
Author(s):  
Jan Lin
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Transit Oriented Development ◽  
Family Networks ◽  
Social Violence ◽  
Accumulation By Dispossession ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Examines the impacts of the sharpening gentrification process in Northeast Los Angeles and its socioeconomic and racial overtones as immigrant working class Latino/a families are increasingly threatened by displacement through rent increases, evictions, and socially traumatic uprooting of multi-family networks. Gentrification is tied to neoliberal local state efforts in Los Angeles to incentivize private investment through urban policy strategies like transit-oriented development, transit villages and small lot housing development. I argue the creative frontier of urban restructuring in Northeast LA also generates social violence expressing capitalism’s tendency to foster “accumulation by dispossession” that has been countered by neighborhood “right to the city” movements. I examine the rise of the urban social movements like Friends of Highland Park and Northeast LA Alliance that advocate for the rights of those threatened by housing displacement and eviction, address community and environmental impacts of new high-density housing projects, and campaign for more socially just housing and urban planning policies in Los Angeles. There is also examination of the plight of the homeless and rehabilitating gang members

Community gardening for integrated urban renewal in Copenhagen: securing or denying minorities’ right to the city?

2019 ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Parama Roy
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Community Gardening ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This chapter presents a case study from Copenhagen on a community-based, but state-initiated urban gardening effort to examine what such efforts mean for the minorities’ (the homeless and the ethnic minorities’) right to the city (Purcell, 2002; 2013) especially within the context of a traditionally welfare-driven, but increasingly neoliberalized urban context. David Harvey has described the right to the city as “not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire” (Harvey, 2003). As such, in this chapter the concept of “right to the city” is operationalized as a measure or proxy for social and spatial justice to explore how the state-initiated community gardening effort in the Sundholm District shapes/secures/denies the homeless and the ethnic minorities’ ability to, a) use and just be in the physical space of the garden (a public space) and b) to translate this into access to the political space of urban governance (and governance of the garden space) where they can voice their needs/concerns.

The city of law

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-212
Author(s):  
Kirsten Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Urban Life ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Legal Construction ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

AbstractThere is now a well-established ‘spatial turn in law’. However, it remains oriented towards notions of space rather than law. How, then, to capture both the spatiality of law and the legality of space? This article draws on Bruno Latour's concept of the legal construction of the ‘social’ to explore the assemblage of the city of law. It shows how law functions as a particular form of association in urban life by tracing two key forms of urban legal association in London, the city of law. The first form is ‘legal ordering’. This seeks to order urban life through domination, and includes citadel law, police law and laws of exception. The second is ‘legal consociations’, which build new forms of urban life, such as urban rights, the rights of the city and the right to the city. Finally, the article explores the creation of a spatial justice that can build more just legal associations.

Urban Policy, Social Movements, and the Right to the City in Brazil

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Friendly
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Positive Change ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Urban Reform ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Brazilian urban social movements have played a key role in bringing about change in urban policy since the 1980s and in light of the widespread protests across the country in June 2013. This insurgency and the urban reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s exemplify waves of mobilization and demobilization, signaling positive change at the level of praxis. More recent events have highlighted challenges for Brazil’s political left. Os movimentos sociais urbanos brasileiros tem desempenhado um papel chave na mudança da política urbana desde os anos 80 e em vista dos mega-protestos espalhados pelo país de junho de 2013. Esta insurgência e o movimento de reforma urbana dos anos 80 e 90 exemplificam ondas de mobilização e desmobilização, sinalizando mudanças positivas ao nível da praxis. Eventos mais recentes têm destacado desafios para a esquerda política brasileira.

scholarly journals Acts for Refugees’ Right to the City and Commoning Practices of Care-tizenship in Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charalampos Tsavdaroglou ◽  
Chrisa Giannopoulou ◽  
Chryssanthi Petropoulou ◽  
Ilias Pistikos
Keyword(s):  
Aegean Sea ◽  
The State ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Mutual Help ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Work Health ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

During the recent refugee crisis, numerous solidarity initiatives emerged in Greece and especially in Mytilene, Athens and Thessaloniki. Mytilene is the capital of Lesvos Island and the main entry point in the East Aegean Sea, Athens is the main refugee transit city and Thessaloniki is the biggest city close to the northern borders. After the EU–Turkey Common Statement, the Balkan countries sealed their borders and thousands of refugees found themselves stranded in Greece. The State accommodation policy provides the majority of the refugee population with residency in inappropriate camps which are mainly located in isolated old military bases and abandoned factories. The article contrasts the State-run services to the solidarity acts of “care-tizenship” and commoning practices such as self-organised refugee housing projects, which claim the right to the city and to spatial justice. Specifically, the article is inspired by the Lefebvrian “right to the city,” which embraces the right to housing, education, work, health and challenges the concept of citizen. Echoing Lefebvrian analysis, citizenship is not demarcated by membership in a nation-state, rather, it concerns all the residents of the city. The article discusses the academic literature on critical citizenship studies and especially the so-called “care-tizenship,” meaning the grassroots commoning practices that are based on caring relationships and mutual help for social rights. Following participatory ethnographic research, the main findings highlight that the acts of care-tizenship have opened up new possibilities to challenge State migration policies while reinventing a culture of togetherness and negotiating locals’ and refugees’ multiple class, gender, and religious identities.

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