The Right to the City
Encyclopedia
The right to the city is an idea and a slogan that was first proposed by Henri Lefebvre
in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville. Lefebvre summaries the ideas as a "demand...[for] a transformed and renewed access to urban life". David Harvey
described it as follows:
Marcelo Lopes de Souza
has argued that as the right to the city has become "fashionable these days", "[t]he price of this has often been the trivialisation and corruption of Lefebvre's concept" and called for fidelity to the original radical meaning of the idea.
A number of popular movements, such as the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo
in South Africa
, the Right to the City Alliance in the United States of America, Recht auf Stadt, a network of squatters, tennants and artists in Hamburg, and various movements in Latin America, have incorporated the idea of the right to the city into their struggles.
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...
in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville. Lefebvre summaries the ideas as a "demand...[for] a transformed and renewed access to urban life". David Harvey
David Harvey (geographer)
David Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York . A leading social theorist of international standing, he received his PhD in Geography from University of Cambridge in 1961. Widely influential, he is among the top 20 most cited...
described it as follows:
Marcelo Lopes de Souza
Marcelo Lopes de Souza
Marcelo Lopes de Souza is a professor at the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Rio de Janeiro. He founded and coordinates a research group whose main focus is the relationships between social relations and space and particularly the spatiality of social change...
has argued that as the right to the city has become "fashionable these days", "[t]he price of this has often been the trivialisation and corruption of Lefebvre's concept" and called for fidelity to the original radical meaning of the idea.
A number of popular movements, such as the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo
Abahlali baseMjondolo
Abahlali baseMjondolo , also known as AbM or the red shirts is a shack-dwellers' movement in South Africa which is well known for its campaigning for public housing. The movement grew out of a road blockade organized from the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the city of Durban in early 2005 and now...
in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, the Right to the City Alliance in the United States of America, Recht auf Stadt, a network of squatters, tennants and artists in Hamburg, and various movements in Latin America, have incorporated the idea of the right to the city into their struggles.
External links
- World Charter for the Right to the City
- Proposal for a Charter for Women's Right to the City
- Proposals and Experiencies towards the Right to the City, Ana Sugranyes and Charlotte Mathivet (editors) 03-16-2010