The right to the city : Prospects for critical urban theory and practice

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The conference will focus on the meaning of the "right to the city" in the context of neoliberal urban restructuring. While the notion of "the right to the city" was popularized by Henri Lefebvre in the late 1960s, it has become something of a keyword among contemporary critical urban
theorists for analyzing struggles to reappropriate urban space towards collective social uses under circumstances in which private capital and state institutions are dominating the urban process. It thus provides a focus for reflecting on the legacies and contemporary possibilities of critical urban theory, and exploring its relation to practice, in the context of early 21st century transformations and struggles.

Specifically, the conference aims to investigate the evolution of critical urban theory since its consolidation over three decades ago, and the changing relation of critical urban theories to ongoing struggles over the form and pathway of urban development (often seeing "urban" as a crystallization of the societal). Inquiry into this relationship entails an analysis of a number of key theoretical, empirical and political issues, including : (a) the changing global and
national parameters for urban development under post-1980s capitalism; (b) supranational, national and subnational political strategies to influence the trajectory of urbanization; and, against this background, (c) the proliferation of popular initiatives to reshape cities towards
progressive or radical-democratic political ends, such as enhanced social and spatial justice, greater equality and socio-ecological sustainability; and (d) the alternatives available for action to produce desired changes in the constitution of urban life today.

The contributors will grapple with the following issues, which have been proposed for debate and discussion at the conference by Peter Marcuse, whose oeuvre will be central to this conference:

• How best to capture the transformation of cities under contemporary capitalism? To what extent can such transformations be understood through notions of neo-capitalism, neoliberalism or globalization?
• What is “critical” about critical urban and social theory today? Is the Frankfurt School still relevant?
• How does “space” structure and result from forms of inequality, and how has this role changed in both historical and contemporary contexts?
• Is another type of city—and society—possible? Are there lessons to be drawn from earlier 20th century experiments, or those of the GDR?
• What are the possibilities and limits of “urban planning”?
• Oppositional movements yesterday and today: in what ways can which of them be actors for social change?