The Right to the City

In: New left review: NLR, Heft 53, S. 23-40

Abstract

The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies & aesthetic values we desire. The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make & remake or cities & ourselves is, the author argues, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights. The author also argues that urbanization has played an active role, alongside such phenomena as military expenditures, in absorbing the surplus product that capitalists perpetually produce in their search for profits. In the later of the article, the author also discusses the topic of girding the globe, property & pacification, dispossessions, & formulating demands. Adapted from the source document.