Lefebvre and the Right to the City in Policy and Politics

I have a new piece that is just out in Policy & Politics, and they have been nice enough to make it available for free during the month of September.  What I am trying to do in the piece is give a solid, fairly thorough account of what Lefebvre thought the right to the city meant (using sources beyond the Writings on Cities book), and then tie that idea in with democracy as I understand it.  I will paste the abstract below if you’d like more information on the argument.  I hope the article is of some interest.  You can’t beat the price, at least.

The piece is part of a special issue of Policy & Politics on “reconfiguring the local public realm” (Volume 41, number 3).  Big thanks go to Gary Bridge, Alex Marsh and David Sweeting, who edited the issue and organized the conference at Bristol where the papers in the issue were first presented.  They have a blog post with more information about the special issue here.

 

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to contemporary debates on governance change in the local public realm by undertaking a close analysis of Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city. I argue that when it is fully appreciated, Lefebvre’s idea imagines a thoroughgoing transformation of the city as a political community. It involves a radical democratization of cities, which Lefebvre understands to mean an ongoing and collective struggle by urban inhabitants to manage the city for themselves, without the state and without capitalism.

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