Whose right(s) to what city

Abstract

The main concern of this chapter is what I take to be the ultimate purpose of critical urban theory: implementing the demand for a right to the city. But that is a demand, a goal, that needs definition. Whose right is it about, what right is it, and to what city? The chapter begins with a look at the actual problems that people face today, and then looks at them in their historical context, focusing on the difference between the crisis of 1968 which produced the demand for the right to the city, and the crisis we confront today. The question, then, is: how do we understand the right to the city today, and how can a critical urban theory contribute to implementing it? The chapter suggests an approach to action that relies on three steps a critical theory could follow: exposing, proposing, and politicizing. The conclusion presents a perhaps far-fetched idea of what the possibilities for large-scale and enduring social change might actually be today. Is another world not only possible, but realistically attainable? A word on the use of terms. “Critical,” “urban,” “theory,” and “practice” are four important words and concepts. (One might argue that “theory and practice” are really only one word in this context, but that’s truer in theory than in practice.) “Critical” I take to be, among other things, shorthand for an evaluative attitude towards reality, a questioning rather than an acceptance of the world as it is, a taking apart and examining and attempting to understand the world. It leads to a position not only necessarily critical in the sense of negative criticism, but also critically exposing the positive and the possibilities of change, implying positions on what is wrong and needing change, but also on what is desirable and needs to be built on and fostered. “Urban” I take to be shorthand for the societal as congealed in cities today, and to denote the point at which the rubber of the personal hits the ground ofthe societal, the intersection of everyday life with the socially created systemic world about us In Lefebvre’s hands, it is a normative concept, incorporating the positively desirable organization of space and time (see Schmid, this volume). “Theory” I take to be the attempt to understand, to explain, and to illuminate the meaning and possibilities of the world in which practice takes place. It is, in a sense, the conscious and articulated aspect of practice, of action. It is developed through action, and in turn informs understanding and undergirds practice. “Practice” is often spoken of as if it were the Siamese twin of theory, because it is needed for theory and because theory should lead to practice if it is taken seriously. The image is of a theory and a practice that are linked organically, that a critical theory depends on a critical practice and a critical practice depends on a critical theory. But it is not so simple. The Paris Commune, a classical example of critical practice, relied on no “theory,” and leading exponents of critical theory saw their work as Flaschenpost, in Adorno’s words, analysis written down and put in a bottle thrown in the ocean hoping it would someday be retrieved and be useful. But it may have been one of the failings of some of the mainstream of critical theory that it saw itself evolving independently of practice, and it may similarly have been a weakness of some forms of critical action that they proceeded uninformed and even rejecting critical theory, as in the We Are the Poors approach (Desai 2002) and in some forms of anarchist and communitarian action.1 In any event, as used here, critical urban theory is taken as analysis that flows from the experience of practice in developing the potentials of existing urban society, and critical theory is intended to illuminate and inform the future course of such practice.