Possible Worlds: Henri Lefebvre and the Right to the City

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

scholarly journals Towards a spatialized utopia: romanticism and everyday life in the Marxism of Henri Lefebvre

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
César Simoni Santos
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Revolutionary Romanticism ◽  
Practical Program ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
Spatial Element

The presence of the spatial element in the reflections of Henri Lefebvre does not merely result from work involving the translation and adaptation of critical thinking developed up until his time. The realization that not even the highest expression of the critical tradition had sufficiently noticed this crucial dimension of life was one of the connecting points between theoretical advance, represented by the spatial orientation of critique, and the effort to renew the utopian horizon. A very distinct assimilation of the early work of Marx and the proximity to revolutionary romanticism, particularly of Nietzschean extraction, rendered a decisive impact on Lefebvrian conception. Practice, body, pleasure and instincts, recovering their place in the critical social imagination, went on to become the basis for the re-foundation of a theoretical-practical program that involved the formulation of the notion of the right to the city. The perspective of appropriation thus replaced the vague emancipatory statements of the subject's philosophies.

Spatial Agency, Territory, and the Right to the City

2021 ◽  
pp. 257-286
Author(s):  
Quill R Kukla
Keyword(s):  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This chapter argues that inclusion in a city or neighborhood requires more than the right to physically reside in it; it requires what Henri LeFebvre, Don Mitchell, and others have called the “right to the city.” The right to the city is not just a formal right to be inside a city without being thrown out; it should be conceived, according to this chapter, as a right to inhabit the city. This requires that we have voice and authority within a city; that we be able to participate in tinkering with it and remaking it; and that we belong in it rather than just perching in it. The chapter explores the complex relationships between public spaces, inclusive spaces, and the right to the city. It examines what sorts of spaces city dwellers need in order to have a flourishing urban life and exercise their spatial agency. It explores some of the barriers that different kinds of bodies face to being included in urban spaces and speculates about what it would take to build a more just and inclusive city.

scholarly journals Lefebvre’s thought in contemporary urban sociology

Sociologija ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-491
Author(s):  
Miloje Grbin
Keyword(s):  
Urban Sociology ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Space Production ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

This paper presents the impact of Henri Lefebvre?s thought in contemporary urban sociology. In the first chapter, the reader can find brief descriptions of two most relevant Lefebvre?s concepts linked to his comprehension of space: production of space, the right to the city and a couple of firmly related concepts. The second chapter presents several examples of their recent interpretations by the authors from different theoretical backgrounds. Simultaneously, it evaluates the relevance of Lefebvre?s theoretical assumptions in contemporary social context, as well as their theoretical and methodological relevance for further research and development of urban sociology. Conclusion emphasizes that Lefebvre?s ideas have a deep and long term influence in urban sociology.

Henri Lefebvre

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Zieleniec
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

Henri Lefebvre is now established as one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century. Over a long life (b. 1901–d. 1991) he wrote and published prodigiously more than sixty books and several hundred articles on a range of issues and themes. His legacy and lasting impact not only includes being the most influential and seminal theorist on the reprioritization of space in social and critical analysis but also recognition for his contribution to the analysis of everyday life, modernity, the Right to the City, and the urban. He continues to influence and inspire research across a number of disciplines and fields; these include rural and regional studies, sociology, geography, politics, philosophy, and urban studies. Lefebvre’s commitment Marxism; his nondogmatic and humanist approach to the definition, discussion, extension, and application of key concepts; and his integration of those concepts into his various analyses of the rural and the city, of the state, of space and politics, and of modernity and everyday life led him to a conflicted relationship and at times marginalization within the structuralist-influenced French Academy and the Communist Party of France in which he was a member for thirty years. His anti-Stalinist stance and nonconformist opposition to the structural determinism prevalent within the party led to his expulsion, but throughout the 1960s, as professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg and latterly at the new university at Nanterre, he became one of the most respected teachers and intellectuals inspiring and influencing the May 1968 student revolt. Lefebvre’s work after that, still influenced and committed to Marxist dialectics and critique, increasingly focused on the urban, the social production of space, everyday life, modernity, and the survival of capitalism. Of these his introduction of the concept of the right to the city and the social production of space have been immensely influential for a range of urban scholars and theorists and his work as a whole is being increasingly adopted, adapted, and extended by a variety of researchers of the city in a range of disciplines. The works selected below reflect Lefebvre’s long career and extensive corpus of work. However, only those books and articles that have been translated into English are included here. They represent his exegesis of Marxism and its application to a range of themes that were applied or are important for urban analysis. The secondary literature cited is organized thematically and while not comprehensive provides an overview of the expanding literature on, about, and applying Lefebvrian analysis.

scholarly journals Espaço abstrato e espaço diferencial: a compreensão do direito à cidade em Henri Lefebvre / Abstract and differential spaces: keys to understanding the right to the city in Henti Lefebvre

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-501
Author(s):  
Diego Coimbra Barcelos da Silva ◽  
Cleide Calgaro ◽  
Ricardo Hermany
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Abstract Space ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Angle Of View ◽  
The Right ◽  
Differential Spaces ◽  
Capitalist Ideology ◽  
The City

ResumoO presente trabalho possui o objetivo de fornecer uma visão panorâmica acerca das ancoragens teóricas da noção de direito à cidade, enquanto projeto orientador de uma hipótese virtual e possível, definida como sociedade urbana. Para tanto, através da revisão bibliográfica, recorre-se à reflexão acerca de alguns elementos, cuja análise se mostra fundamental para a delimitação do campo teórico em que o pensamento se constrói, na obra de Henri Lefebvre, especialmente no que concerne às categorias espaço abstrato e espaço diferencial. Conclui-se que a partir do estudo da obra de Lefebvre que o direito a cidade se constitui em um espaço de investigação onde é possível pensar os processos históricos assumidos em diferentes escalas até chegar a atualidade. Deste modo, o direito à cidade é adequado e objetiva fundir os conflitos e os processos urbanos com a produção do conhecimento socioespacial, permitindo a transformação do saber e da realidade da urbe.Palavras-chave: Henri Lefebvre; direito à cidade; sociedade urbana; espaço abstrato; espaço diferencial. AbstractThis article aims to provide a different angle of view about the theoretical anchors of the original notion of the right to the city, in Henri Lefebvre. Therefore, through literature review, of a qualitative-exploratory character, a dialectical reflection about the characteristics of the right to the city project is used, from the perspective of the spatial theory developed by the author at a later point in his work. Within this scope, and for the purposes of this study, the notions of “abstract space” and “differential space” were especially taken as analytical categories. In constant mobilization, these phenomena interact dialectically, and constitute the fundamental antithesis between domination and appropriation of the city, whose scan is promising for a particular understanding of the theoretical field in which the project of the right to the city is built on the work of Lefebvre. This analysis results in the understanding of the right to the city as a claim, which is established in the conflictive dialectic between two socio-spatial segments, present since the modern city: the abstract space, where the reason of State, the law and the capitalist ideology are allied in the project of homogenization of the society, and the differential space, founded on social relations rooted in the forms of using spaces that express ways of life that are resistant to the logic of capital.Keywords: Henri Lefebvre; right to the city; urban society; abstract space; differential space.

Dreaming dialectically: The death and life of the Mexico City charter for the right to the city

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (10) ◽  
pp. 2064-2079
Author(s):  
Ben Gerlofs
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Political History ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This article investigates the conceptual and political history of the right to the city in Mexico City from the late 1980s to the present, focusing especially on the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City completed and endorsed by leading political figures in 2010. By grounding this investigation in the dialectical methods of Henri Lefebvre, the article builds on roughly 12 months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork in Mexico City to argue that all such instantiations of the right to the city are bound to commit a certain violence against the idea. What the Mexico City case also suggests, however, is that such a dialectical concept is also always radically open to revivification and reimagining, as exemplified by the return of the right to the city in Mexico City’s 2017 constitution. Analysing the right to the city and its attendant politics and history from this vantage allows two crucial and underappreciated insights to emerge from this case: that the right to the city can be and sometimes is pursued under alternative auspices, and that any apparent stasis, even political death, is best considered temporary and mutable.

scholarly journals Should there be a 'Right to the City'?

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 69-78
Author(s):  
Heather Lang
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Philosophical Discussion ◽  
Global System ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Henri Lefebvre coined the phrase the ‘right to the city’ in 1968, which encapsulates a set of collective rather than individual rights. It is based on two principals for urban dwellers: the right to participate in decision-making in regard to the city and the right to appropriate or “physically access, occupy, and use urban space” (Purcell 2002, 103). This original social-philosophical discussion has recently evolved to include legal arguments in the context of a global system which espouses the supremacy of human rights. Though there is not anywhere with a functioning, Lefebvre-inspired “right to the city”, radical and incremental attempts to create its foundations are occurring in South America and common law jurisdictions.

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