Premium
The Vortex of Rights: ‘Right to the City’ at a Crossroads
Author(s) -
Kuymulu Mehmet BariŞ
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
international journal of urban and regional research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.456
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1468-2427
pISSN - 0309-1317
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2427.12008
Subject(s) - right to the city , grassroots , urbanism , cognitive reframing , sociology , politics , banner , value (mathematics) , contradiction , law and economics , negotiation , political economy , political science , law , public administration , social science , epistemology , architecture , art , social psychology , psychology , philosophy , archaeology , machine learning , computer science , visual arts , history
The right to the city concept has recently attracted a great deal of attention from radical theorists and grassroots activists of urban justice, who have embraced the notion as a means to analyze and challenge neoliberal urbanism. It has, moreover, drawn considerable attention from U nited N ations ( UN ) agencies, which have organized meetings and outlined policies to absorb the notion into their own political agendas. This wide‐ranging interest has created a conceptual vortex, pulling together discordant political projects behind the banner of the right to the city. This article analyzes such projects by reframing the right to the city concept to foreground its roots in M arxian labor theory of value. It argues that L efebvre's formulation of the right to the city — based on the contradiction between use value and exchange value in capitalist urbanism — is invaluable for analyzing and delineating contradictory urban politics that are pulled into the vortex of the right to the city. Following L efebvre's lead in such an analysis, however, reveals certain limitations of L efebvre's own account. The article therefore concludes with a theoretical proposition that aims to open up space for further critical debate on the right to the city.