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GEOG 347: Public Space & Cultures of Democracy

GEOG 347: Public Space & Cultures of Democracy. 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. - David Harvey. Harvey (2008) The Right to the City.

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GEOG 347: Public Space & Cultures of Democracy

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  1. GEOG 347: Public Space & Cultures of Democracy 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. -David Harvey

  2. Harvey (2008) The Right to the City • "Urbanization has always been a class phenomenon". (p. 24) • Urbanization as solution to economic crisis: Surplus absorption through urbanization...has entailed repeated bouts of urban restructuring through "creative destruction" which nearly always has a [violent] class dimension. • Paris, 1850s; New York, 1950s

  3. Haussmann's Plan for Paris (1850s) • "His mission was to solve the surplus capital and unemployment problem through urbanization." (p. 26) • "A transformation of urban infrastructures (boulevards, demolition, etc)" • Slum clearance-- removal of working class and underclass from city center • "the construction of a new way of life and urban persona (consumption, tourism, pleasure)".

  4. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/02/paris-ification-hanoi/1286/http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/02/paris-ification-hanoi/1286/

  5. Moses' Plan for New York City (1940s-50s) • New metropolitan scale for thinking of the urban process • Highways, bridges, tunnels • Suburban home ownership for the middle classes • Cars, appliances • Individualized identity tied to property

  6. Capitalist Urbanization Today • Lefebvre post-1968: urbanization central to the survival of capitalism and thus a crucial focus of class struggle • Neoliberal era post-1970s • 2008 Crash- housing bubble • Urbanization of China • Urban life as a commodity • Cities fragmented, divided, unequal, conflict-prone • Accumulation by dispossession: capture of valuable land from low-income populations

  7. Urban social movements for the Right to the City • Right to the City is restricted to small elite who can shape cities after their own desires • Demand for "greater democratic control over the production and utilization of the surplus" • Global urban struggle

  8. Paris 1848

  9. Paris 1871

  10. Oaxaca 2006

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