The Right to the City: From Capital Surplus to Accumulation by Dispossession

Author(s):  
David Harvey
2019 ◽  
pp. 168-194
Author(s):  
Jan Lin

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


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (II) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Sadaf Mehmood

Urban space is inherently uneven. Economic pursuits and commercial integrity translate urban space into categorization of haves and have-nots.Neo-Marxists theorize spatial disequilibrium through the dynamics of capital accumulation.Analysis of Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga helps to explorecity space as a commodified place that serves the interests of capital accumulation by converting it as a space of differences, struggles and negotiations. While examining spatial alienation, I probe the making of urban other who experiences, evictions, and displacements followed by the development projects of capital accumulation in the theoretical frame of David Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession. The urban space expands and grows not for the urban other but for the elitist consumption. This directs the argument to inspect the creation of a critical spatial consciousness to assert the urban other’s right to the city. By retaliating to their evictions and dispossessions they devise strategies for remaking their space through their lived daily experiences. This has been supported by the theoretical lens of Henri Lefebvre’s “The right to the city”. The selected fiction defines uneven city space whereby the spatial metamorphosis dispossesses and displaces the urban other andraises critical spatial consciousness to obstruct subsequent displacements.


GEOgraphia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Márcio Piñon de Oliveira

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. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Rocco ◽  
Luciana Royer ◽  
Fábio Mariz Gonçalves

City ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-473
Author(s):  
Bruno Flierl
Keyword(s):  

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Stanley

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.


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