UN
Habitat understands cities to be agents of progressive change. In the Habitat III “vision” statement, for
example, UN Habitat highlights the “transformative power of urbanization.” It continues, “Advances in technology, realignment
of global power relations, changes in demographic profiles, recognition of
emerging resource constraints as well as the reassertion of questions of rights
and justice in the global development world have
triggered a profound systemic change. The new international order
provides more room for cities and regional
economies to contribute to national development through direct participation in
the global economy” (UN 2013, 2). UN
Habitat, however, constructs the Right to the City from the perspective of
human development, meaning the liberal internationalist agenda of bringing
marginalized people more fully into the capitalist market. A “developed” person is an empowered
individual, capable of engaging in and benefiting from capitalist markets. This thinking is the legacy of neoliberal
globalization, a Thomas Friedman (1999) version of the world, where urban
development happens when Vietnamese grandmas get into the great game of
capitalism by setting up a scale in Hanoi’s Thống Nhất Park and weigh people
for a small charge. The development
version of right to the city is the liberal agenda of freeing the rural poor
from the shackles of what is perceived to be poverty trapping traditional society,
and allowing them to migrate to the city. This version is articulated in neoliberal
economist Edward Glasser’s (2012) Triumph
of the City, where he makes the argument that urban poverty is actually a
sign of a city’s success as against an indicator of an urban dystopia, as
suggested by Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums. The development construct of Right to the
City, however, constitutes a substantial deviation from Henri LeFebvre’s (2003
[originally published in 1970]) original formulation, as well as David Harvey’s
(2008 and 2012) recent iterations (also see:
Attoh 2011, Purcell 2002; Hodson and Marvin 2009; Merrifield 2011).
In the years leading to the Parisian student protest movement in 1968, LeFebvre was formulating a critique of late capitalism that became his Right to the City. Following Harvey (2012) and Smith’s (2003) tracing of the idea, LeFebvre was increasingly alarmed by the ways capitalism was rendering Paris a vulgar urban form. The concern reflected a sense that France was corrupted by its errant colonial enterprise in Algiers, a contamination that found articulation in right-wing politics at home. Anticipating the great social eruption, LeFebvre’s original Right to the City proposition was published in 1970. Its basic premise, one more fully developed by Harvey, was that the city, perhaps more than Marx’s industrial working class, had the potential to be the grave-digger of capitalism. Core to the revolutionary potential of the urban form was a dialectic of transformation: the city transforms people while people transform the city. LeFebvre argued that people had a fundamental right to these dual transformations. These transformations, of course, were the benign consequences of free market capitalism, as against an anti-capitalist proposition, one intended to overcome the crises of late capitalism. UN Habitat’s version of Right to the City really could not be further from LeFebvre’s meaning.
References:
In the years leading to the Parisian student protest movement in 1968, LeFebvre was formulating a critique of late capitalism that became his Right to the City. Following Harvey (2012) and Smith’s (2003) tracing of the idea, LeFebvre was increasingly alarmed by the ways capitalism was rendering Paris a vulgar urban form. The concern reflected a sense that France was corrupted by its errant colonial enterprise in Algiers, a contamination that found articulation in right-wing politics at home. Anticipating the great social eruption, LeFebvre’s original Right to the City proposition was published in 1970. Its basic premise, one more fully developed by Harvey, was that the city, perhaps more than Marx’s industrial working class, had the potential to be the grave-digger of capitalism. Core to the revolutionary potential of the urban form was a dialectic of transformation: the city transforms people while people transform the city. LeFebvre argued that people had a fundamental right to these dual transformations. These transformations, of course, were the benign consequences of free market capitalism, as against an anti-capitalist proposition, one intended to overcome the crises of late capitalism. UN Habitat’s version of Right to the City really could not be further from LeFebvre’s meaning.
References:
Attoh, Kafui.
A. 2011. “What Kind of Right Is the Right to the
City?” Progress in Human Geography 35, no. 5 (February 14): 669–85.
Friedman, Thomas. 1999. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization. New York: Picador.
Friedman, Thomas. 1999. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization. New York: Picador.
Glaeser,
Edward. 2012. Triumph
of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener,
Healthier, and Happier. New York, NY:
Penguin Books.
Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the
City to the Urban Revolution. New York: Verso.
Harvey, David.
2008. “Right to the City.” New Left Review 53 (October 2008): 23.
Hodson, Mike,
and Simon Marvin. 2009. “The Right to the City--Energy and Climate
Change.” Critical Currents, no. 6 (2009): 70–78.
Lefebvre,
Henri. 2003. The Urban Revolution.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Merrifield,
Andy. 2011. “The Right to the City and Beyond:
Notes on a Lefebvrian Re-Conceptualization.” CITY 15, no. 3–4 (August):
478–81.
Purcell, Mark. 2002. “Excavating
Lefebvre: The Right to the City and Its Urban Politics of the Inhabitant.” GeoJournal
58: 99–108.
Smith,
Neil. 2003. “Foreward.”
Lefebvre, Henri. The Urban Revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
UN Habitat. 2013.
“Vision for Habitat III.” UN-Habitat Urban Visions No. 3. Available at: http://unhabitat.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Habitat_III_Vision.pdf
