Metropolitics

The Right to the City: An Emancipating Concept?

Matthias Lecoq & translated by Oliver Waine — 2020-07-03T05:00:00Z

The radical approach formulated by Henri Lefebvre in 1968 criticized the failure to include inhabitants in the production of urban spaces. While the “right to the city” is today widely known and shared concept, Matthias Lecoq looks back on the evolution of this idea and questions its emancipatory potential.
Fifty years after it was defined by Henri Lefebvre (1968), the right to the city remains more relevant than ever. It is nevertheless necessary to update his understanding of the city,

- Essays / Lefebvre, right to the city, urban planning, inhabitant

Reclaiming the “Right to the City” Through Participatory Budgeting

Tyler James Olsen — 2019-02-19T06:00:00Z

Participatory budgeting is growing in many cities around the world. Can it become a tool for urban dwellers to reclaim power over their living conditions and the running of their city?
The crisis of legitimacy and the turn to the city
Facing the neoliberal retrenchment of the state that has been exasperated by the financial and economic troubles of the past 10 years, our representative democracies have been increasingly subject to a profound crisis of legitimacy. This, in turn, has led to

- Reviews / participation, political participation, participatory budgeting, right to the city, Lefebvre

Solidarity Economics and Rights to the Contested City in Belfast

Brendan Murtagh — 2018-12-19T06:00:00Z

Is Lefebvre's right to the city capable of extending the abstract meaning of formal “rights” to practical applications? With this question in mind, Brendan Murtagh scrutinizes a self-organization project in a neighborhood on the periphery of post-conflict Belfast in Northern Ireland.
---- Series: 50 ans après : actualités du droit à la ville d'Henri Lefebvre The wave of Occupy protests that followed the financial crisis in 2008 reinvigorated populist claims to the city, specific campaigns

- Essays / United Kingdom, autogestion, Lefebvre, solidarity, right to the city, Belfast, women, periphery, Ireland, Northern Ireland, self-organization, contested city, social economy, surplus, peace

Beyond “planetary urbanization”: recasting contemporary urban research

Matthieu Giroud (†) & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-11-27T05:55:00Z

We were profoundly shocked to learn of the death of Matthieu Giroud, a victim of the attacks of 13 November in Paris. Matthieu was a gifted researcher, and a specialist in the fields of urban transformations and gentrification processes. He was also a communicator of knowledge and a translator of fundamental texts of critical geography. For many of us, he was above all a colleague and a friend, and we are deeply saddened; he has left us far too soon. We have chosen to publish a translation of

- Reviews / urbanization, capitalism, Lefebvre, urban studies, theory, critical urban theory

Clitoral Mass: A Women-of-Color Ride Through Los Angeles

Jennifer Candipan — 2015-06-02T05:00:00Z

Every year in the summer, a group of women, women of color, and women-identified riders cycle through the city of Los Angeles to reclaim space and visibility in a city that too often ignores them and their needs. Jennifer Candipan, a participant and researcher, describes and analyzes the reasons and effects of the 2014 Clitoral Mass ride.
On a mid-August Saturday, nearly 300 bicyclists descended upon Downtown Los Angeles's Grand Park to kick off Clitoral Mass 2014, an annual 33‑mile,

- From the Field / public space, gender, United States, Los Angeles, bicycles, Lefebvre, minorities, right to the city, cycling

A Right to the City in the Global South?

Marianne Morange & Amandine Spire & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-04-17T04:50:00Z

The idea of the right to the city has been the subject of strongly renewed interest in academic milieux, activist circles and among public stakeholders. This idea, far from the definition established by Henri Lefebvre, is today at the heart of the debate on the construction of more just urban societies. This debate is well under way in the Global North – but what about the Global South?
The idea of the right to the city, formulated almost 50 years ago, is one that is highly mobilised today,

- Essays / social movement, postcolonial, Africa, Global South, Lefebvre, right to the city, Latin America, Brazil, urban citizenship

Henri Lefebvre for architects

Grégory Busquet & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-12-11T05:50:00Z

Although Henri Lefebvre is well known for introducing the concept of “the right to the city”, his work is little used by urban planners and architects. In Henri Lefebvre on Space, Łukasz Stanek reveals the practical ambitions of the this thinker's work and how they can be put to use not just by academics but also by professionals in search of a theoretical frame of reference.
By revisiting the philosophy of the man considered, in France, to be one of the last “global” urban thinkers (before

- Reviews / architecture, urban planning, Lefebvre, architectural theory