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.

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.

From critical urban theory to the right to the city

City ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 185-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Marcuse
Keyword(s):  
Right To The City ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

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.

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