Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Right To The City: Rethinking Architecture's Social Significance

2011; Routledge; Volume: 16; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13264826.2011.628633

1755-0475

Lee Stickells,

Urban Planning and Landscape Design

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Mirko Zardini, "A New Urban Takeover" in Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini (eds), Actions: What You Can Do With the City, Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture (co-published by SUN), 2008, 15. 2. See Architectural Theory Review 16, no.2 (2011) for a full explanation of the new editorial vision. Volume 17 of ATR will see the introduction of a new Editorial Advisory Board alongside the recently appointed editors and reconfigured Editorial Committee. 3. See, for example, Margaret Crawford, "Rethinking 'Rights', Rethinking 'Cities': a response to David Harvey's 'The Right to the City'", in Zanny Begg and Lee Stickells (eds), The Right to the City, Sydney: Tin Sheds Gallery, 2011, 33–36. 4. Henri Lefebvre, "Right to the City" in Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (eds), Writings on Cities, New York: Blackwell, 1996, 63–181. 5. Harvey, "The Right to the City", 23. 6. Lefebvre, "Right to the City", 158. 7. Lefebvre, "Right to the City", 147. 8. Henri Lefebvre, "The Specificity of the City" in Kofman and Lebas (eds), Writings on Cities, 101 9. Instead of citizens, Lefevbre refers to those who have a right to the city as citadins – a term that combines the notion of citizen with that of denizen/ inhabitant (and the right to the city empowers urban inhabitants). Its enfranchising qualities differ from the more abstract "citizenship", associated primarily with membership in a national political community. Lefebvre argues that the right to the city "should modify, concretize and make more practical the rights of the citizen as an urban dweller (citadin) and user of multiple services." See discussion of this in Mark Purcell, "Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant", GeoJournal, 58 (2002), 102. 10. Lefebvre, "Right to the City", 158 11. Lefebvre, "Right to the City", 172 12. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000, 183 13. Mark Purcell, Recapturing Democracy: Neoliberalization and the Struggle for Alternative Urban Futures, London: Routledge, 2008, 92. 14. Two examples of the many programs and institutions that reflect, either explicitly or implicitly, the paradigms of the "Right to the City" are: The Right To The City Alliance, in the U.S. and Europe (an advocacy group representing a widespread network of local community organizations); UN-HABITAT and UNESCO, who work closely in promoting the "Right to the City" at the international level, particularly through supporting inclusive forms of urban governance. 15. Preamble to World Charter on the Right to the City, Elaborated at the Social Forum of the Americas (Quito, Ecuador – July 2004) & the World Urban Forum (Barcelona, Spain – September 2004), http://www.urbanreinventors.net/3/wsf.pdf (accessed 4 February 2011). 16. Ruth Keffer, introductory text for DIY Urbanism exhibition at San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR), quoted in Mimi Zeiger, "The Interventionist's Toolkit, Part 1", Places, 2011, http://places.designobserver.com/feature/the-interventionists-toolkit-part-1/24308/ (accessed 3 February 2011). 17. Mitscherlich quoted in Margit Mayer, Civic City Cahier 1: Social Movements in the (Post-)Neoliberal City, London: Bedford Press, 2010, 19. 18. A significant early collection of analyses and descriptions of architects as social change agents can be found in C. Richard Hatch (ed), The Scope of Social Architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984. 19. Paul Barker, Reyner Banham, Peter Hall and Cedric Price, "Non-Plan: an experiment in freedom", New Society 13, no. 338, 20 March 1969, 435–443. 20. See, for example Architectural Design, no. 3 (1976), which features articles from Henry Moss ("Professional Backlash") and John Turner ("Housing by People"). 21. Bryn Jones and Mike O'Donnell (eds), Sixties Radicalism and Social Movement Activism: Retreat Or Resurgence? New York: Anthem Press, 2010. The book's contributions assess resonances between the radical/ libertarian emphasis on civil society "freedoms" in 1960s cultural radicalism and contemporary political global human rights movements. A general conclusion is that, in some senses, the sixties live on today in discursive and political themes. 22. See, for example: Jason Hackworth, The Neoliberal City, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007; Bob Jessop, "Globalization, Entrepreneurial Cities and the Social Economy", in P. Hamel, H. Lustiger-Thaler, and M. Mayer (eds), Urban Movements in a Globalizing World, New York: Routledge, 2000, 81–101. 23. Mayer, Civic City Cahier 1: Social Movements in the (Post-)Neoliberal City, 26–27. 24. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1992, 26. 25. Crawford, "Rethinking 'Rights', Rethinking 'Cities'", 36. 26. One mapping can be found in Helge Mooshammer and Peter Mörtenböck, Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008. The book and DVD investigate urban network processes, spaces of geocultural crises, and forms of cultural participation and self-determination in Europe. 27. See, for example: John Leighton Chase, Margaret Crawford and John Kaliski (eds), Everyday Urbanism, New York: The Monacelli Press, 2008 (expanded edition); Karen Franck and Quentin Stevens (eds), Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life, London: Routledge, 2006; Lorett Lees (ed.), The Emancipatory City? Paradoxes and Possibilities, London: Sage Publications, 2004; Sophie Watson, City Publics: The (Dis)enchantments of Urban Encounters, London: Routledge, 2006; Jeffrey Hou (ed.), Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, London: Routledge, 2010; Brett Bloom and Ava Bromberg (eds), Belltown Paradise/Making Their Own Plans, Chicago: Whitewalls, Inc. 2004; Temporary Services, Public Phenomena, Chicago: Half Letter Press LLC, 2008 28. In addition to the aforementioned exhibitions and their accompanying publications (Actions: What You Can Do With the City, The Right to the City and DIY Urbanism), also of note are: Trans(ient) City, a city-wide program of urban installations supported by the City of Luxembourg in 2007; Unplanned: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale, an exhibition curated by Mitch McEwan at Superfront Gallery, California in 2010; just space(s), an exhibition and program of events organised by Ava Bromberg and Nicholas Brown at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) in 2007; Designcity: Design for Urban Space and the Design City Discussion, Berlin: Transform-Berlin e.V. (2006) (published on the occasion of Designmai 2006, Berlin); Rochus Urban Hinkel (ed.), Urban Interior: Informal Explorations, interventions and occupations, Baunach: Spurbuchverlag, 2011; Tim Rieniets, Jennifer Sigler and Kees Christiaanse (eds), Open City: Designing Coexistence, Amsterdam: SUN, 2009; Bartolomeo Pietromarchi (ed.), The (un)common place: art, public space and urban aesthetics in Europe, Barcelona: Fondazione Adriano Olivetti; Actar, 2005. 29. Francesca Ferguson & urban drift (eds), Talking Cities: The Micropolitics of Urban Space, Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006, 2. 30. Hou Hanru, "Trans(ient) City: A Public Art Project for Luxembourg 2007" in Trans(ient) City, Barcelona: Books on the Move, 2008, 8. 31. aaa-PEPRAV (eds), Urban/Act: A handbook for alternative practice, Paris: aaa-PEPRAV, 2007, 13. European Platform for Alternative Practice and Research on the City (PEPRAV) is a project partially funded by the CULTURE 2000 program of the European Union. It initially ran as a partnership between atelier d'architecture autogérée (aaa, Paris), the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, Recyclart (Brussels) and metroZones (Berlin), between September 2006 and September 2007. For more on PEPRAV's work see: www.peprav.net 32. Doina Petrescu, Constantin Petcou and Nishat Awan (eds), Trans-Local-Act: Cultural Practices Within and Across, Paris: aaa-PEPRAV, 2010. 33. Rochus Urban Hinkel (ed.), Urban Interior: Informal Explorations, interventions and occupations, 6. 34. Rieniets, Sigler and Christiaanse (eds), Open City: Designing Coexistence, 12. 35. Rieniets, Sigler and Christiaanse (eds), Open City: Designing Coexistence, 209. 36. Kate Stohr and Cameron Sinclair (eds), Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses To Humanitarian Crises, London: Thames & Hudson, 2006; Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford (eds), Expanding Architecture: design as activism, New York: Metropolis Books, 2008. 37. See, for instance, the organisations Architecture for Humanity (established in 1999), Architects without Frontiers (also established in 1999) and Public Architecture (established in 2002, especially noted for an initiative to professionalize pro bono work). 38. Andres Lepik, Small scale, big change : new architectures of social engagement, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010, rear cover. 39. Quilian Riano, "Relearning the Social: Architecture and Change", Places Online 2010, http://places.designobserver.com/feature/relearning-the-social-architecture-and-change/19128/ (accessed 07 September 2011); Alexandra Lange, "Uncommon Ground" Change Observer Online, 2010, http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/feature/uncommon-ground/18988/ (accessed 07 September 2011). 40. Lepik, Small Scale, Big Change, 12. 41. A point also made in the reviews by Alexandra Lange and Quilian Riano. 42. Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till, Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture, London: Routledge, 2011, and www.spatialagency.net. 43. Awan, Schneider, and Till, Spatial Agency, 29. 44. Awan, Schneider, and Till, Spatial Agency, rear cover. 45. Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till, "Beyond Discourse: Notes on Spatial Agency", in Footprint: Delft School of Design Journal, 4 (Spring 2009): 98. 46. Schneider and Till, "Beyond Discourse", 97. 47. Tahl Kaminer, Architecture, Crisis and Resuscitation: The reproduction of post-Fordism in late twentieth-century architecture, London: Routledge, 2011 (reviewed in this issue). 48. See, for example, the recent hand-wringing within Esther Choi and Marikka Trotter (eds), Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. The introductory dialogue asks if architecture's theoretical, methodological and material borrowing (its "agnosticism") has taken the discipline to a point where it can no longer define itself. 49. Urban Think Tank, "Southern Exposures", Archithese, 3 (2010), 99. 50. Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011. 51. Sherry R. Arnstein, "Ladder of Citizen Participation", Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35, no. 4 (1969), 216–224; Johann Albrecht, "Towards a Theory of Participation in Architecture: An Examination of Humanistic Planning Theories", Journal of Architectural Education 42, no. 1 (1988), 24–31. 52. Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till (eds), Architecture and Participation, London: Routledge, 2005. 53. Teresa Hoskyns, "City/Democracy: Retrieving Citizenship", in Jones, Petrescu and Till, Architecture and Participation, 123. 54. See, for example: Markus Miessen and Shumon Basar, "Introduction: Did We Mean Participate, or Did We Mean Something Else?" in Markus Miessen and Shumon Basar (eds), Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006; and Markus Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation (Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality), Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010. 55. Rahul Mehrotra (ed), Everyday Urbanism: Margaret Crawford vs. Michael Speaks, (Vol. 1 of the "Michigan Debates on Urbanism" series), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture, 2005. 56. She dubs these interventions "provisional, opportunistic, ubiquitous and odd tactics in guerrilla and DIY practise and urbanism". See: Mimi Zeiger, "The Interventionist's Tool Kit Part 3: Our Cities, Ourselves", Places Online, 2011, http://places.designobserver.com/feature/the-interventionists-toolkit-part-3/29908/ (accessed 16 September 2011). 57. Martha Rosler, "Culture Class: Art, Creativity", Urbanism, Part III, e-flux journal, 25 (May 2011), 15. 58. Lee Pugalis and Bob Giddings, "A Renewed Right to Urban Life: A Twenty-First Century Engagement with Lefebvre's Initial 'Cry'", Architectural Theory Review, 15, no 3, 230. 59. Doubly relevant here given that Lefebvre was close to the Situationists until an acrimonious split around 1962. 60. Pugalis and Giddings, 278. 61. A point that guides the whole of Jeremy Till's Architecture Depends, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. 62. Bruce Robbins, "Pathetic Substitutes," Assemblage 23 (1994): 86–91.