Who was Henri Lefebvre?
The Right to the City – French philosopher, Henri Lefebvre’s writings spanned the 20th century, inspired by prominent thinkers like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, and Marx. The primary aspect of his writing was a critique of societal conditions ranging from rural to urban settings and the larger systems of capitalism that dictated these conditions. Like many of his contemporaries, he was critical of the particular brand of socialism that was in practice under Stalinism. His vision did not see the overtaking of a capitalist government by a worker party running a highly bureaucratic state as the answer. Instead, the society he envisioned through his writings was an ongoing process that would move away from the ideas of state rule and self-governing collectives.
The Right to the City | The Right to the City
In his book the right to the city, published in 1968, he calls for a more holistic understanding of human society to oppose the reduction of all human value to monetary aspects. While most Marxist philosophers view the contract of citizenship as a bourgeoisie project, Henri Lefebvre recognised the current unchanged state of the contract from the 18th century needed a radical extension. This departure from the status quo required the mobilisation of citizens whereby the power they had previously given away to the capitalist or bureaucratic state could be re-appropriated. Instead of separating the state from the people, the vision was to absorb the two to make a whole; a proletariat dictatorship where the majority would assume power from the capitalist majority, leading to a deepening democracy.
Lefebvre also distinguished between the urban and its distorted off-shot, the city that reduces its complex social relation to the bare-bone economic elements. At the core of this is the issue of private property that segregates the urban into different exclusionary spheres. To this end, Lefebvre called to ‘de-alienate’ the urban space by appropriating it through its inhabitants’ direct and active participation.
In many ways, his approach towards viewing cities was romantic, as it looked at revolutionary ideals ranging from Asiatic Cities to Antique Greco-Roman and the Medieval. The city’s diverse context in civic form and the interplay of the urban system is the perfect figure-ground for this grand socialist experiment which calls for a utopia of sorts. However, we have seen these sudden eruptions of the urban when citizens have activated public space demanding freedoms and radical change. Another example is when communities participate in space-producing activities like community-built projects or the trunk infrastructure laid out by participatory planning.
The overarching message
We don’t just reside in cities and contribute to their economic engine but inhabit them by expressing the full richness of our lives and vital social needs. These include our need for creative activity, information, vitality, and play. Citizens are no longer to be viewed as passive consumers of capitalist products but as active in their practices to dismantle this top-down approach. Professionals like architects, planners, and politicians are all stakeholders that can employ more active roles in the participatory planning processes of space-making. The right to the city could then be scaled from a singular home to whole neighbourhoods, communities, and the larger urban context.
In many ways, the informal settlements are the citizens attempting to take back space previously inaccessible to them despite the vital labour they provide to the urban. The role of civil societies in engaging with more significant issues of neo-liberal development is another example of activated inhabitants laying their claim to the urban space which belongs to all. While time to time, there have been attempts at establishing a utopian society that shuns private property and monetary exchange like the many communes, cooperatives, and global ecovillages. Several community members throughout history have looked towards exploring alternative means of communal living outside the capital accumulation centres we call our cities.
Henri Lefebvre’s Right to the city may seem radical in its critique of the town; its theme has historically been invoked by many people across centuries and diverse geographies. Be it Auroville City in India or Twin Oaks in Virginia, these ongoing social experiments perhaps hint at the radical move of cities away from the state and capital, which remains a work in progress. Many intentional communities are formed upon shared worldviews and beliefs and offer the promise of connection to nature and other human beings. While many of these attempts at utopian societies are situated in remote contexts, Lefebvre envisioned a revolution of mobilized inhabitants from within the city. One doesn’t have to move away from their city disenchanted as To this end the idea of participatory master planning exercises which integrate the wishes of everyday citizens is a vital step in ensuring that the vision of city aligns with the wishes of its inhabitants.the issue isn’t the space but the current capitalist paradigm which produces these spaces. The right to the city calls for a radical reimagining of the urban, with the vibrancy of human connection at its heart.
Citations:
Purcell, M. (2014) “POSSIBLE WORLDS: HENRI LEFEBVRE AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY,” The Journal of Urban Affairs, 36.
Mariani, M. (2020) The new generation of self-created Utopias, The New York Times. The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/t-magazine/intentional-communities.html (Accessed: November 19, 2022).
Is the boom in communal living really the good life? (2021) The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/17/is-the-boom-in-communal-living-really-the-good-life (Accessed: November 19, 2022).
Castro Seixas, E. (1AD) Urban (digital) play and right to the city: A critical perspective, Frontiers. Frontiers. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.636111/full#:~:text=According%20to%20Lefebvre%20(1996)%20the,174). (Accessed: November 19, 2022).
