The City-Logic of Resistance: Subverting Urbicide in the Middle East City

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Extreme Variant ◽  
Urban Terrain ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Most armed conflict today takes place within urban terrain or within an urbanised context. An extreme variant of such armed conflict is violence perpetrated by external state and non-state forces within the city, known as urbicide. Urbicidal violence deliberately strives to kill, discipline or deny the city to its inhabitants by targeting and then reordering the sociomaterial urban assemblage. Civil resistance within urbicidal violence seeks to subvert the emerging alternative sovereign order sought by such forces. It does so by using the inherent logic of the city in order to maintain/restore the community's social cohesion, mitigate the violence, affirm humanity, and claim the right to the city. This paper investigates the city-logic of civil resistance through examples drawn from the recent urbicidal experiences of Middle East cities such as Gaza, Aleppo, Mosul, and Sana'a. Theoretical insights from the conflict resolution literature, critical urban theory, and assemblage thinking inform the argument.

scholarly journals Revisiting the Right to the City, Rethinking Urban Environmentalism: From Lifeworld Environmentalism to Planetary Environmentalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Margaret Haderer
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Grassroots Initiatives ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Environmentalism

In the environmental politics literature, cities are commonly framed as key sites for a shift towards greater sustainability and urban grassroots initiatives, such as food co-ops, urban gardening initiatives, repair cafés, and libraries of things, are commonly portrayed as such a shift’s key drivers. This paper develops a critical perspective on both common portrayals. It does so by drawing on critical urban theory, especially Lefebvre’s Right to the City. First, inspired by Lefebvre’s critique of city-centrism, the paper argues that the scope and limits of urban environmentalism hinge not only on the goals pursued but also on how the urban is framed. Urban environmentalism may mean mere lifeworld environmentalism: the greening of cities as if there were (relatively) bounded sites. Yet urban environmentalism may also mean planetary environmentalism: the mapping, problematization, and transformation of unsustainable urbanization processes that underpin given sites and lifeworlds, but also operate at beyond the latter—at a societal and planetary scale. Second, inspired by Lefebvre’s reformulation of right claims as a transformative political tool, this paper takes issue with environmental practices and discourses that present society’s niches, cracks, and margins as a key fermenting ground for radical environmental change. Since not only institutional but also bottom-up pursuits of more sustainable nature-society relations often remain stuck in mere lifeworld reform, this paper foregrounds heterodox right claims as an underexplored modus operandi in active pursuits of and discourses on radical environmental change. Heterodox right claims mean the active appropriation of dominant political languages, such as the language of right, while seeking to change the latter’s grammar. What this may mean in the realm of environmental politics, will be spelled out at hand of the example of claims to a right to public transport.

scholarly journals La reproducción de la informalidad en el contexto urbano: el caso de la comuna 20 en Cali, Colombia

2018 ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Paula Contreras Paredes
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Spatial Segregation ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Urban Structure ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

La informalidad ha sido una característica permanente en el desarrollo urbano de la comuna 20 de Cali, desde el siglo pasado hasta la actualidad los asentamientos de desarrollo incompleto han ido evolucionando y vinculándose con la ciudad, aunque paralelamente los problemas causados por el conflicto armado también han influenciado en la segregación socio-espacial en este sector de la ladera. En este estudio, se hace referencia a dos de los elementos que incentivaron la reproducción urbana informal, el primero es el déficit de las políticas habitacionales y el segundo las relaciones que se establecen entre la ciudad formal y la ciudad informal. Desde esta hipótesis, se comprueba que debido a la falta de unas soluciones de vivienda adecuada para la población con menos ingresos aumentan los asentamientos informales en la comuna. Sin embargo, la necesidad de ser reconocidos legalmente y de ser partícipes del derecho a la ciudad hacen que se desarrollen procesos de urbanización que permiten una relación con la estructura urbana del contexto. AbstractInformality has been a permanent feature in the urban development of commune 20 in Cali. Since the last century until present days, incomplete development settlements have evolved and linked with the city although at the same time, the problems caused by the armed conflict have also influenced in the socio-spatial segregation in this hillside sector. This study makes reference of two of the main elements that stimulated informal urban reproduction, the first is the deficit of housing policies and the second one is the relation established between the formal city and the informal city. From this hypothesis, it is verified that due to the lack of adequate housing solutions for the less income population rise the informal settlements in the commune. However, the needs of being legally recognized and be part of the-right-to-the-city conduced them to develop urbanization processes that allows a relation with the context’s urban structure.

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