Ciudades (Jun 2012)
El derecho a la ciudad desde Henri Lefebvre hasta David Harvey. Entre teorizaciones y realización
Abstract
This rewiev compares Henri Lefebvre idea concerning the “right to the city” with David Harvey‟s one. This comparison, rather than an academic practice, implies a political connotation. Both Lefebvre and Harvey consolidate this right in the context of the theoretical and practical struggle against capitalist urbanization that should be undertaken and, what is more, against the productive model that capitalist encourages to perpetuate. This article on two radical thinkers of the urban environment expects the right to the city not just to remain in “an alibi, a pious wish or fiction” and it reveals contributions and contradictions in both authors thought regarding the basic question on the transition from critic to action: What to do? Henri Lefebvre thought presents a first period in which working-class is interpreted as the spearhead of a socialist revolution that implied a collective re-appropriation of the urban space; and a second one in which he is content with a “citizen” view of social change. Harvey, for his part, defines the right to the city as the peak of a real urban civilization, which is radically different from the capitalist productive model, but, as far as the methods to reach it are concerned, he re-invoke “citizen movements”, “spaces of hope” and “alternatives sites” like squats. The author of this article claims that the current return of a critical and radical thought on the urban is being spread only in academic areas and defends that we should start to think about how to transit from theory to execution.
