scholarly journals The End of the Right to the City: A Radical-Cooperative View

2021 ◽  
pp. 107808742110578
Author(s):  
Caleb Althorpe ◽  
Martin Horak

Is the Right to the City (RTTC) still a useful framework for a transformative urban politics? Given recent scholarly criticism of its real-world applications and appropriations, in this paper, we argue that the transformative promise in the RTTC lies beyond its role as a framework for oppositional struggle, and in its normative ends. Building upon Henri Lefebvre's original writing on the subject, we develop a “radical-cooperative” conception of the RTTC. Such a view, which is grounded in the lived experiences of the current city, envisions an urban society in which inhabitants can pursue their material and social needs through self-governed cooperation across social difference. Growing and diversifying spaces and sectors of urban life that are decoupled from global capitalism are, we argue, necessary to create space for this inclusionary politics. While grassroots action is essential to this process, so is multi-scalar support from the state.

2021 ◽  
pp. 257-286
Author(s):  
Quill R Kukla

This chapter argues that inclusion in a city or neighborhood requires more than the right to physically reside in it; it requires what Henri LeFebvre, Don Mitchell, and others have called the “right to the city.” The right to the city is not just a formal right to be inside a city without being thrown out; it should be conceived, according to this chapter, as a right to inhabit the city. This requires that we have voice and authority within a city; that we be able to participate in tinkering with it and remaking it; and that we belong in it rather than just perching in it. The chapter explores the complex relationships between public spaces, inclusive spaces, and the right to the city. It examines what sorts of spaces city dwellers need in order to have a flourishing urban life and exercise their spatial agency. It explores some of the barriers that different kinds of bodies face to being included in urban spaces and speculates about what it would take to build a more just and inclusive city.


2020 ◽  
pp. 213-229
Author(s):  
Karina Chérrez-Rodas

El siguiente escrito es una revisión bibliográfica que se desarrolla en función de tres conceptos claves de Lefebvre: El Derecho a la Ciudad, El Control Social y el Espacio Urbano; concebidos en el marco de sus líneas de investigación y orientación marxista. La investigación pretende emplear apreciaciones del autor en mención, enmarcadas en el acontecer de la ciudad en la actualidad, y trasladar a la relectura de problemáticas puntuales en dos ciudades latinoamericanas: Cuenca-Ecuador y Córdoba-Argentina. A partir del Derecho a la Ciudad definido por Lefebvre; se realiza una crítica, al trazado de la nueva área de planificación urbanística en Cuenca, basado en principios funcionalistas, que ha jerarquizado la circulación vehicular, en detrimento del uso peatonal del espacio público. En la misma línea de la crítica de la modernidad, el control social se manifiesta en un sector de la ciudad de Córdoba, el predio de la Casa de Gobierno. Analizar problemáticas en contextos similares, pero a la vez con diferentes escalas de ciudad, permiten validar las tesis y reflexiones de Lefebvre en su época para la planificación de ciudades contemporáneas, cuyos modelos de desarrollo han tenido como consecuencia deficiencias en la vida urbana. Palabras clave: Ciudades, control social, Derecho a la ciudad, espacio urbano, vida urbana. AbstractThe following piece of writing is a bibliographic review that was developed from three key concepts of Lefebvre: Right to the City, Social Control and Urban Space. It was conceived within the framework of his lines of research and Marxist orientation. The research intends to use the author's appreciations in mention, framed in the events of the city at present, and to transfer to the re-reading of specific problems in two Latin American cities: Cuenca-Ecuador and Córdoba-Argentina. Based on the right to the city defined by Lefebvre, a critique was made of the new urban planning area in Cuenca, based on functionalist principles, which has hierarchized vehicle circulation to the detriment of the pedestrian use of public space. Under the same line of the criticism of modernity, social control was manifested in a sector of the city of Córdoba, the Government House site. Problems in similar contexts were analyzed, but at the same time with different city scales. It allowed us to validate Lefebvre's thesis and reflections in his time for the planning of contemporary cities, whose development models have resulted in deficiencies in urban life. Keywords: Cities, social control, Right to the city, urban space, urban life.


Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (66) ◽  
pp. 125-127
Author(s):  
Jane Collins

Susser and Tonnelat’s article on the three urban commons is both visionary and heartening. Its counterpastoral polemic glorifies urban modes of sociality and the forms of common property fostered by urban life. The authors find in cities communities of experience that cross class lines and create inadvertent coalitions around shared problems. They argue that specific components of what has been called “the right to the city” need to be understood as “commons”—collective property that is neither fully public nor private but shared by individuals as they go about everyday life in urban settings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Ran Hirschl

Extensive urbanization and the consequent rise of megacities are among the most significant demographic phenomena of our time. Our constitutional institutions and constitutional imagination, however, have not even begun to catch up with the new reality. In this article, I address four dimensions of the great constitutional silence concerning the metropolis: ( a) the tremendous interest in cities throughout much of the social sciences, as contrasted with the meager attention to the subject in constitutional theory and practice; ( b) the right to the city in theory and practice; ( c) a brief account of what national constitutions actually say about cities, and more significantly what they do not; and ( d) the dominant statist stance embedded in national constitutional orders, in particular as it addresses the sovereignty and spatial governance of the polity, as a main explanatory factor for the lack of vibrant constitutional discourse concerning urbanization in general and the metropolis in particular.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-212
Author(s):  
Kirsten Campbell

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-501
Author(s):  
Diego Coimbra Barcelos da Silva ◽  
Cleide Calgaro ◽  
Ricardo Hermany

ResumoO presente trabalho possui o objetivo de fornecer uma visão panorâmica acerca das ancoragens teóricas da noção de direito à cidade, enquanto projeto orientador de uma hipótese virtual e possível, definida como sociedade urbana. Para tanto, através da revisão bibliográfica, recorre-se à reflexão acerca de alguns elementos, cuja análise se mostra fundamental para a delimitação do campo teórico em que o pensamento se constrói, na obra de Henri Lefebvre, especialmente no que concerne às categorias espaço abstrato e espaço diferencial. Conclui-se que a partir do estudo da obra de Lefebvre que o direito a cidade se constitui em um espaço de investigação onde é possível pensar os processos históricos assumidos em diferentes escalas até chegar a atualidade. Deste modo, o direito à cidade é adequado e objetiva fundir os conflitos e os processos urbanos com a produção do conhecimento socioespacial, permitindo a transformação do saber e da realidade da urbe.Palavras-chave: Henri Lefebvre; direito à cidade; sociedade urbana; espaço abstrato; espaço diferencial. AbstractThis article aims to provide a different angle of view about the theoretical anchors of the original notion of the right to the city, in Henri Lefebvre. Therefore, through literature review, of a qualitative-exploratory character, a dialectical reflection about the characteristics of the right to the city project is used, from the perspective of the spatial theory developed by the author at a later point in his work. Within this scope, and for the purposes of this study, the notions of “abstract space” and “differential space” were especially taken as analytical categories. In constant mobilization, these phenomena interact dialectically, and constitute the fundamental antithesis between domination and appropriation of the city, whose scan is promising for a particular understanding of the theoretical field in which the project of the right to the city is built on the work of Lefebvre. This analysis results in the understanding of the right to the city as a claim, which is established in the conflictive dialectic between two socio-spatial segments, present since the modern city: the abstract space, where the reason of State, the law and the capitalist ideology are allied in the project of homogenization of the society, and the differential space, founded on social relations rooted in the forms of using spaces that express ways of life that are resistant to the logic of capital.Keywords: Henri Lefebvre; right to the city; urban society; abstract space; differential space.


Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennie Middleton

This paper explores the socialities of everyday urban walking. The paper begins from the starting contention that a wide range of social and cultural theory, urban planning and transport literatures position walking as a practice that unproblematically encourages ‘social mixing’, ‘community cohesion’ and ‘social interaction’. Through the analysis of in-depth interview and diary data from research on urban walking in London, this paper engages with a series of underexamined questions. What, for example, is the nature of social interactions on foot? Who are they with, what initiates them and how do they unfold? How do these interactions relate to how we understand the relationship between walking and urban space? Attention is drawn to verbal and non-verbal interactions of strangers as they walk and to the significance of the practical accomplishment of walking together. However, an examination of the discursive organisation of diary and interview data extends existing work concerning the practical organisation of everyday pedestrian mobilities by considering the significance of participants’ accounts of their walking experiences. This analytic move foregrounds a counterposition to dominant discourses surrounding everyday walking practices that is situated in the context of broader concerns with everyday urban politics and the ‘right to the city’. This approach contributes to a clearer engagement with the socialities of urban walking whilst raising important questions concerning the ways in which particular walking discourses inform urban scholarship. The paper concludes that in the promotion of walking as a form of low-carbon active travel greater account should be taken of pedestrian encounters.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Pinurba Parama Pratiyudha

Right to the city become one of essential point in New Urban Agenda discussion, as the adoption of Sustainable Development Goals which includes point 11 on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements. Right to the city is a concept which encloses political power, land ownership, and social justice within globalized cities which run into rapid change. Lefebvre describes the right to the city as people cry and demand a transformed and renewed urban life. Participation is seen as a basic right in the concept of the right to the city. This article drawing on a study case of relocation of Malioboro’s parking attendants. The relocation itself was one of the policies to revitalize tourism area along Malioboro street. In the process, there are some resistances from Malioboro’s parking attendants emerge as their concern on their sustainability after the relocation into the new place. Based on the field research, this article concludes that the process of participation that occurs does not meet up with parking attendants aspiration and the process is ruined by the government. Public participation is ineffective at the process and ruined as the government intervention in Malioboro parking attendants organization. The ineffectiveness of public participation is due to the logic of technocratic participation and the government's informal approach to some parking attendants.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-118
Author(s):  
Kamil Śmiechowski

The aim of this article is to analyze how the concept of mieszczaństwo was redefined in Polish political discourse between 1905 and 1914 in conjunction with concepts of intelligentsia and bourgeoisie. My hypothesis is that before the Great War, in a time of powerful social and political revolutions that took place on the streets of Warsaw, Łódź and other cities, new ways of conceptualizing the urban society emerged. I shall discuss the circumstances that led to the forming of the concept of the Polish mieszczaństwo during the debate about the urban self-government in the Kingdom of Poland after the 1905 Revolution. As the city itself became the subject of political competition, and the right to govern the city became a demand of the Polish public opinion. For National Democratic Party it was an excellent occasion to expand anti-Semitic rhetoric and promote the idea of the Polonization of cities as a long-term goal. However, I argue that this rhetoric would not find public response if the intelligentsia itself would not redefined its attitude to other groups of urban dwellers. The mieszczaństwo, which had no political meaning previously, became the main factor of the imagined modernization of Poland. Despite the price of the ethnic conflict it became obvious that Poland had to be urbanized to be modernized.


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