In March 1968 Henri Lefebvre published The Right to the City. It caused an awareness in the history of ideas on the perception of the city as a stake in society. It announces the arrival of a new reality, the urban, the end of the industrial city and its fragmentation in the outskirts and suburbs. This article shows the extensions and modernity of Lefebvre's theses: his notions have been widely taken up, both nationally and internationally, by urban political practitioners and urban sociologists. This book, by its approach, has also promoted a progression in the appropriation of the city and it leaves tracks helping to understand the urban today. The place of this right in the city is a question more than ever of actuality.
Henri Lefebvre is …show more content…
Re-appropriating the city to reclaim its own life and reinventing a collective life worthy of the name seems to be the guideline. To initiate this new society ("urban society"), Lefebvre affirms the necessity of a political force (the proletariat) and calls for a "generalized self-management". In no case can the right to the city be reduced to participation. This is nothing more than an ideology which enables the acquiescence of the people concerned to be obtained at the least price. Harvey takes up again the question posed by Lefebvre which can be exposed as that of the discussion between the identity of place and the identity of class. A discussion which, under certain conditions alone, can lead to a positive content for the expression "right to the city": "should anti-capitalist struggles be concentrated and organized explicitly on the vast terrain of the city and the urban city?".
In her text “When Place Becomes Race”, Sherene Razack, like Lefebvre, argues that space is a social product. Most people think of space as empty, evolving naturally or separartely from the subjects that use them. There are two theoretical routes that arise through the rejection of this assumption: materiality of space and symbolic meaning of space. Materiality of space argues that space is the result of economic relations and that it is shaped by class systems and capitalism. Symbolic meaning of space refers to what particular …show more content…
McCann’s paper, like Razack, explains how racialized representations of space play into the construction of urban geographies. It is important to note that Lefebvre’s framework did not include race as an element of the city as it was not a constitutive component of the greater urban question in 1968 France. McCann believes that the right to the city refers to the right to be included in the center city and the public spaces rather than being excluded on the basis of race and creating spatial segregation. In his conclusion McCann suggest that the role that the body plays within Lefebvre's theoretical framework of space suggests that the notions of “the right to the city” and “the right to difference” – that is to say the right to express difference – create a sense of hope for the development of antiracist urban public
Henri Lefebvre is …show more content…
Re-appropriating the city to reclaim its own life and reinventing a collective life worthy of the name seems to be the guideline. To initiate this new society ("urban society"), Lefebvre affirms the necessity of a political force (the proletariat) and calls for a "generalized self-management". In no case can the right to the city be reduced to participation. This is nothing more than an ideology which enables the acquiescence of the people concerned to be obtained at the least price. Harvey takes up again the question posed by Lefebvre which can be exposed as that of the discussion between the identity of place and the identity of class. A discussion which, under certain conditions alone, can lead to a positive content for the expression "right to the city": "should anti-capitalist struggles be concentrated and organized explicitly on the vast terrain of the city and the urban city?".
In her text “When Place Becomes Race”, Sherene Razack, like Lefebvre, argues that space is a social product. Most people think of space as empty, evolving naturally or separartely from the subjects that use them. There are two theoretical routes that arise through the rejection of this assumption: materiality of space and symbolic meaning of space. Materiality of space argues that space is the result of economic relations and that it is shaped by class systems and capitalism. Symbolic meaning of space refers to what particular …show more content…
McCann’s paper, like Razack, explains how racialized representations of space play into the construction of urban geographies. It is important to note that Lefebvre’s framework did not include race as an element of the city as it was not a constitutive component of the greater urban question in 1968 France. McCann believes that the right to the city refers to the right to be included in the center city and the public spaces rather than being excluded on the basis of race and creating spatial segregation. In his conclusion McCann suggest that the role that the body plays within Lefebvre's theoretical framework of space suggests that the notions of “the right to the city” and “the right to difference” – that is to say the right to express difference – create a sense of hope for the development of antiracist urban public