The Right to the City

What do we know about the five waves of urban activism?

Maryam Tahmasebi, Journalist at Traces&Dreams

If you have walked through historic neighbourhoods or major city centres in recent years, the changes are unmistakable. New developments rapidly replace old houses, and rents have soared beyond the reach of ordinary people.

This situation, which may be termed an ‘urban crisis’, has prompted an important question for citizens worldwide: ‘What kind of city do we want to live in?’.

Anna Domaradzka, a researcher at the University of Warsaw’s Institute for Social Studies, discusses this in her paper for the journal Voluntas, ‘Urban Social Movements and the Right to the City: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Urban Mobilization’.

She notes that scattered protests are actually part of a broader movement to reclaim the ‘Right to the City’. This principle asserts that the city should be a space for collective life rather than a market for relentless, inequitable profit.

The concept of the ‘Right to the City’ pursues values such as justice, democracy, and diversity. Movements use this concept to achieve the following goals:

• Reclaiming decision-making power: Citizens should have control over urbanisation processes and the distribution of power resources.
• Shifting focus from ‘exchange value’ to ‘use value’: Public services (such as housing and transport) should be decommodified, focusing on their actual utility for citizens’ lives.

Domaradzka combines the theoretical framework of ‘social movements as networks’ with concepts of ‘diffusion and translation of ideas’ and analyses the history and evolution of these movements. She points out that the first modern wave of these activities began in the 1960s during the ‘Fordism’ crisis, focusing on housing conflicts, tenant strikes, and protests against segregated cities.

The second wave appeared in the 1980s in response to neoliberal policies and cuts in public spending. During this period, the relationship between movements and the state shifted from confrontation to collaboration, marking the beginning of the ‘NGO-ization’ of civil society.

The third wave emerged in the 1990s with the promotion of the ‘creative city’ model, where local authorities adopted movement slogans to attract capital and market the city.

Since the early 2000s, a new wave has been taken place, centred on protests against the commercialisation of public spaces, the rights of the ‘precariat’ (the precarious working class), and transnational activities.

She references the concept of the ‘Right to the City’ proposed by Henri Lefebvre as a shared conceptual ‘frame’ for various groups. Lefebvre viewed this right as a combination of different rights, such as the right to information, services, and the use of the city centre. It encompasses both a ‘cry’ (the protest of marginalized groups) and a ‘demand’ (the aspirations of integrated but dissatisfied groups).

Domaradzka says that today, real estate elites and influential politicians act as the primary ‘incumbents’ of this right, while urban activists, as ‘challengers’, try to reclaim this space.

We can classify various aspects of urban mobilisation and the struggle for the ‘Right to the City’ into categories such as:

Economic and social rights: Involving social entrepreneurs, precarious workers, the unemployed, and the urban poor.

Housing rights: Including tenant associations, squatters, and grassroots groups fighting forced evictions.

Civil and political rights: Including ‘Right to the City’ federations, local electoral committees, and watchdog groups.

Environmental rights: Including ecological organisations, food cooperatives, and urban sharing initiatives.

Cultural rights: Focusing on neighbourhood associations, ethnic and religious groups, alternative cultural spaces, and heritage preservation.

Property rights: Including NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) groups, homeowners, and private investors who also use this framework for their own interests.

Domaradzka refers to the ‘norm life cycle’, where urban activists act as ‘norm entrepreneurs’ who trigger the emergence of a norm in the first stage. This is followed by a ‘norm cascade’, during which international organisations like UNESCO and the UN adopt these concepts. Finally, the ‘internalisation’ stage arrives, where the norm becomes part of laws and administrative procedures.

However, this path is not without obstacles. Today, even politicians and developers use the term ‘Right to the City’ to make their projects appear democratic without actually changing the distribution of power.

Although Lefebvre’s radical concepts have been accepted by international bodies like the UN, this acceptance has sometimes led to the ‘domestication’ and dilution of the transformative power of these slogans.

Modern urban movements now work pragmatically to improve the quality of life. The fight against air and noise pollution and the creation of alternative cultural centres are signs of citizens reclaiming their identity and their city.

The Right to the City is a moral ideal for building cities where human diversity prevails over the logic of capital and every citizen feels a sense of belonging and agency.

Source: Domaradzka A. Urban Social Movements and the Right to the City: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Urban Mobilization. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. 2018;29(4):607-620. doi:10.1007/s11266-018-0030-y