Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
THE RIGHT TO THE CITY: COMMONING (WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY IMPLY? (Purcell,…
THE RIGHT TO THE CITY: COMMONING
THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
(Harvey, 2012)
Definition:
Far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources
It is a right to change ourselves by changing the city; right to reinvent the city more after their hearts' desire
Common, not individual right. Since transformation depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization
Capitalism and Urbanisation
Intricately linked
The city and capital surplus production and absorption
Since cities are a result of concentration of surplus product, urabanisation has always been a class phenomenon
Creative destruction
Urban restructuring for surplus absorption
Poor dispossessed of property
Violent process
Seoul 1990s smash down housing
"Progressive" solutions
Awarding property rights
(-) Poor easily persuaded to trade right for cash
(-) Destroys collective modes of social solidarity
(-) Won't exactly help because there is no sustainable employment
(-) perpetuates NL ethic of intense possessive individualism
Microfinance
(-) Debt peonage (work to pay it off)
What should we do?
Signs of revolt everywhere but not coupled
Need to demand greater democratic control over the production and use of surplus
Right to the city falling into the hands of private/quasi private hands. States serving their interests as well.
WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY IMPLY? (Purcell, 2002)
Scholarly concern that NL restructuring is leading to the disenfranchisement of cities (loss of rights)
Analyze Lefebvre's work to determine (1) what right to the city entails and (2) if it can address the problem
Who is enfranchised?
Citadins (those who inhabit the city), not national citizens
Earned through the living out life in the city
What is right to the city?
Right to participation
Citadins must be central to production of space decisions
They are the dominant and hegemonic voice
Right to appropriation
Beyond physically assessing space
Also the right to produce urban space to meet needs
Can it address disenfranchisement caused by NL? Yes
It is a radical transformation of liberal citizenship and capitalist social relations
Caveats
Right to the city is not an answer but a door to new urban politics aka. urban politics of the inhabitant
The key weakness is inhabitant = working class, agenda = anti-capitalist
Inhabitants are more diverse. The agenda they will pursue will be heterogenous
It is the undertermined outcome of these politics that will result in either greater urban democracy or new forms of political domination
Uncritical assumption that rights = positive