Reflections on a Politics of Research for the Right to the City

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-401
Author(s):  
Éva Tessza Udvarhelyi
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
Grassroots Organizing ◽  
Flexible Framework ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

The idea of the “right to the city” (Lefebvre 2003), based on the understanding of the ‘urban’ as a unique form of human existence, has become a popular framework both for thinking about social justice in a specifically urban context and as a profound and at the same time flexible framework for urban grassroots organizing. Through theoretical exploration and practical examples, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the formation of a politics of research and knowledge production that suits the concept and practice of the right to the city. Based on an expansion of the “right to research” as developed by Arjun Appadurai (2006) and heavily influenced by the theory and practice of Participatory Action Research, the overall argument of this paper is that the right to research has to be acknowledged as an inevitable component of any struggle for the right to the city.

scholarly journals Characterization of Spatial Planning in Brazil: The Right to the City in Theory and Practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Rocco ◽  
Luciana Royer ◽  
Fábio Mariz Gonçalves
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

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.

Constitutions and the Metropolis

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Ran Hirschl
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
Spatial Governance

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.

Participatory action planning as transductive reasoning: towards the right to the city in Los Arenales, Antofagasta, Chile

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Vergara-Perucich
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Grassroots Organization ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Abstract This article discusses the experience of creating an overall plan for developing an informal settlement in the Chilean city of Antofagasta. This was accomplished by applying transductive reasoning to a community urban planning practice that aims to advance the community towards achieving the right to the city. By doing so, the article elaborates on insights gathered from the application of transductive reasoning as a method developed by Henri Lefebvre to reflect on the possible futures of cities using a bottom-up approach, thus utilizing the right to the city as a political agenda. Thus, this intervention provides an empirical reflection on the scope of action research in which the ideas of Henri Lefebvre are suitable for transforming utopian thinking into a political agenda for social transformation by a grassroots organization. The conclusions express the critiques of other authors whose approaches to Henri Lefebvre’s methods are substantially theoretical, thus wasting its empirical potential and capacity to engage communities.

Achieving a Right to the City in Practice: Reflections on Community Struggles in Dublin

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rory Hearne
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Neoliberal Urbanism ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
The Right ◽  
Community Struggles ◽  
National Governments ◽  
Development Ngos ◽  
The City

The concept of the right city is strongly contested within urban theory and practice. Debate centres on what rights this entails, who the rights are for, and how the right to the city can be achieved in practice. Exploited and alienated urban inhabitants and social movements have drawn on the right to the city to challenge the impacts of financial crisis, austerity and deepening neoliberal urbanism. At the elite institutional level, UN agencies, development NGOs, and local and national governments have been critiqued for diluting and co-opting the emancipatory potential of the right to the city and using it to legitimise on-going processes of neoliberal governance. This paper draws on evidence gathered from struggles against austerity and neoliberal urbanism at a grassroots community level in Dublin, Ireland, to develop understandings of what it means to achieve the right to the city in practice. It makes the case for a greater focus on actually existing struggles (particularly of marginalised communities) rather than institutional frameworks. It also presents evidence of positive outcomes from human rights based approaches. This highlights the potential for community struggles to achieve the right to the city in practice. However the paper also shows that major challenges face marginalised communities in finding the resources and energy required to create and sustain city wide alliances.

Public Spaces, Private Spaces, and the Right to the City

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Moroni ◽  
Francesco Chiodelli
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Spaces ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Two arguments have recently strongly influenced the theory and practice of planning: (i) public space is what basically characterises any city (the citizen's right to the city is first and foremost a claim on public space); (ii) public space is crucial because it provides the physical fulcrum for public interaction and political debate. This article takes a critical look at these two ideas, highlighting: (i) that private spaces have also crucially contributed (and continue to do so) to defining and determining what a city is – the city cannot be conceived without considering both public and private spaces and the crucial synergy between these two spheres; (ii) that the public sphere does not come into being solely in public spaces (as testified by the Internet); furthermore, public spaces perform other roles and functions (besides making debate and confrontation possible), and these various roles may at times clash with each other. All these aspects suggest a more balanced approach to the understanding of urban spaces and their importance.

Art, Idleness and Food: The Ethics of War Communism and the Origins of Production Art, 1918–1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-287
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Early Production ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Theory Of Production

The article examines the impact of the discourses concerning idleness and food on the formation of “production art” in the socio-political context of revolutionary Petrograd. The author argues that the development of the theory and practice of this early productionism was closely related to the larger political, social and ideological processes in the city. The Futurists, who were in the epicenter of Petrograd politics during the Civil War (1918–1921), were well acquainted with both of the discourses mentioned, and they contrasted the idleness of the old art with the dedicated labor of the “artist-proletarians” whom they valued as highly as people in the “traditional” working professions. And the search for the “right to exist” became the most important goal in a starving city dominated by the ideology of radical communism. The author departs from the prevailing approach in the literature, which links the artistic thought of the Futurists to Soviet ideology in its abstract, generalized form, and instead elucidates ideological influences in order to consider the early production texts in their immediate social and political contexts. The article shows that the basic concepts of production art (“artist-proletarian,” “creative labor,” etc.) were part of the mainstream trends in the politics of “red Petrograd.” The Futurists borrowed the popular notion of the “commune” for the title of their main newspaper but also worked with the Committees of the Rural Poor and with the state institutions for procurement and distribution. They took an active part in the Fine Art Department of Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Education). The theory of production art was created under these conditions. The individualistic protest and “aesthetic terror” of pre-revolutionary Futurism had to be reconsidered, and new state policy measures were based on them. The harsh socio-economic context of war communism prompted artists to rethink their own role in the “impending commune.” Further development of these ideas led to the Constructivist movement and strongly influenced the extremely diverse trends within the “left art” of the 1920s.

A utopia do direito à cidade: Possibilidades de superação da dicotomia favela-bairro no Rio de Janeiro

GEOgraphia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Márcio Piñon de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

A utopia do direito à cidade,  no  caso específico do Rio de Janeiro, começa, obrigatoriamente, pela  superação da visão dicotômica favela-cidade. Para isso, é preciso que os moradores da favela possam sentir-se tão cidadãos quanto os que têm moradias fora das favelas. A utopia do direito à cidade tem de levar a favela a própria utopia da cidade. Uma cidade que não se fragmente em oposições asfalto-favela, norte-sul, praia-subúrbio e onde todos tenham direito ao(s) seu(s) centro(s). Oposições que expressam muito mais do que diferenças de  localização e que  se apresentam recheadas de  segregação, estereótipos e  ideologias. Por outro  lado, o direito a cidade, como possibilidade histórica, não pode ser pensado exclusivamente a partir da  favela. Mas as populações  que aí habitam guardam uma contribuição inestimável para  a  construção prática  desse direito. Isso porque,  das  experiências vividas, emergem aprendizados e frutificam esperanças e soluções. Para que a favela seja pólo de um desejo que impulsione a busca do direito a cidade, é necessário que ela  se  pense como  parte da história da própria cidade  e sua transformação  em metrópole.Abstract The right  to the city's  utopy  specifically  in Rio de Janeiro, begins by surpassing  the dichotomy approach between favela and the city. For this purpose, it is necessary, for the favela dwellers, the feeling of citizens as well as those with home outside the favelas. The right to the city's utopy must bring to the favela  the utopy to the city in itself- a non-fragmented city in terms of oppositions like "asphalt"-favela, north-south, beach-suburb and where everybody has right to their center(s). These oppositions express much more the differences of location and present  themselves full of segregation, stereotypes and ideologies. On  the other  hand, the right to  the city, as historical possibility, can not be thought  just from the favela. People that live there have a contribution for a practical construction of this right. 

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