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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.

Emerging new forms of people's organizations may be interpreted as prefiguring the future of the Latin American city, with its strength in the barrios rather than in the institutions that are still symmetrically arranged around the Plaza de Armas, or the more recent citadels of oppression. Despite its Spartan circumstances, life in the barrios can be generous and optimistic, based on mutual aid, cooperation, and democratic self-governance

Urban Claims and the Right to the City explores how contested processes of urban development, and the rights of city dwellers, are understood and interpreted from the perspective of women and men working, in different ways, at the grassroots in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and London, UK. In doing so, it represents the grounded voices of authors whose work and lives mean that they engage, on a daily basis, with issues related to housing and spatial rights, and identity struggles around race, gender, disability, sexuality, citizenship and class.

This article investigates the relationship between the transformation of cities and the right to the city. To be able to do this, the problems that are created by contemporary urbanization such as social exclusion, poverty and environmental degradation are discussed in the first part. After that, with a special focus on the period starting with the industrial revolution up until today, the article explains economic and political motivations behind the urban transformation. This part emphasizes how urban change under different forms of capitalism creates and deepens social inequalities in cities. The final part of this article will be a discussion on the right to the city, and its relation to these urban issues.

While there has been a growing utilization of Henri Lefebvre's concept of the `right to the city', not much has been said about the legal implications of such a concept. This article discusses the main aspects of the legal construction of the `right to the city' in Brazil. Following a discussion of Lefebvre's contribution to the debate on urban politics, the article analyses the role played by the legal order in the determination of the exclusionary pattern of urban development in Brazil, as well as the role a redefined legal order can have in the processes of urban reform, socio-spatial inclusion, and sustainable development. Emphasis is placed on the main dimensions of the 2001 City Statute, the legal framework governing urban development and management, which recognized the `right to the city' as a collective right, followed by an introduction to the proposed `World Charter of the Right to the City'. As a conclusion, it is argued that, while a great deal has already been done to promote the materialization of the `right to the city' in Brazil, there are still serious obstacles to be overcome, and renewed socio-political mobilization is required for the new legal-urban order to be fully implemented.