From Critical Urban Theory to

CITY, VOL. 13, NOS. 23, JUNESEPTEMBER 2009

ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/09/02-30185-13 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13604810902982177

From critical urban theory to the right to the city

Peter MarcuseTaylor and Francis

The right to the city is becoming, in theory and in practice, a widespread, effective formula-tion of a set of demands to be actively thought through and pursued. But whose right, whatright and to what city? Each question is examined in turn, first in the historical context of1968 in which Henri Lefebvre first popularized the phrase, then in its meaning for theguidance of action. The conclusion suggests that exposing, proposing and politicizing the keyissues can move us closer to implementing this right.

I. Introduction: overview and definitions

he main concern of this paper iswhat I take to be the ultimatepurpose of critical urban theory:

implementing the demand for a Right tothe City. But that is a demand, a goal, thatneeds definition. Whose right is it about,what right is it and to what city? The paperbegins with a look at the actual problemsthat people face today, and then looks atthem in their historical context, focusingon the difference between the crisis of 1968,which produced the demand for the Rightto the City, and the crisis we confronttoday. The question then is: how do weunderstand the Right to the City today,and how can a critical urban theorycontribute to implementing it? The papersuggests an approach to action that relieson three steps a critical theory could follow:exposing, proposing and politicizing. Theconclusion presents a perhaps far-fetchedidea of what the possibilities for large-scaleand enduring social change might actuallybe today. Is another world not only possi-ble, but realistically attainable?

A word on the use of terms. Critical,urban, theory and practice are four

important words and concepts. (One mightargue that theory and practice are reallyonly one word in this context, but thatstruer in theory than in practice.)

Critical I take to be, among otherthings, shorthand for an evaluative attitudetowards reality, a questioning rather than anacceptance of the world as it is, a takingapart and examining and attempting tounderstand the world. It leads to a positionnot only necessarily critical in the sense ofnegative criticism, but also critically expos-ing the positive and the possibilities ofchange, implying positions on what iswrong and needing change, but also onwhat is desirable and needs to be built onand fostered.

Urban I take to be shorthand for thesocietal as congealed in cities today, and todenote the point at which the rubber of thepersonal hits the ground of the societal, theintersection of everyday life with the sociallycreated systemic world about us.

Theory I take to be the attempt to under-stand, to explain and to illuminate the mean-ing and possibilities of the world in whichpractice takes place. It is, in a sense, theconscious and articulated aspect of practice,of action. It is developed through action, and

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186 CITY VOL. 13, NOS. 23

in turn informs understanding and under-girds practice.

Practice is often spoken of as if it werethe Siamese twin of theory, because it isneeded for theory and because theoryshould lead to practice if it is taken seri-ously. The image is of a theory and a prac-tice that are linked organically, that a criticaltheory depends on a critical practice and acritical practice depends on a critical theory.But it is not so simple. The Paris Commune,a classical example of critical practice, beganwith no theory, and leading exponents ofcritical theory saw their work as Flaschen-post, in Adornos words, analysis writtendown and put in a bottle thrown in theocean hoping it would some day be retrievedand be useful. But it may have been one ofthe failings of the mainstream of criticaltheory that it saw itself evolving indepen-dently of practice, and it may similarly havebeen a weakness of some forms of criticalaction that they proceeded uninformed andeven rejecting critical theory, as in the WeAre the Poors approach (Desai, 2002) and insome forms of anarchist and communitarianaction.1

In any event, as used here, critical urbantheory is taken as analysis that flows fromthe experience of practice in developing thepotentials of existing urban society, and criti-cal theory is intended to illuminate andinform the future course of such practice.

The sections that follow discuss the realitytoday and its history, the right to the city interms of whose right, what right and whatcity, solutions in terms of the formulationExpose, Propose, Politicize and finally,getting to the goal.

II. The reality today and its history

Today

As this is written, two developments shapethe context for our analysis: the election ofBarack Obama as president of the USA andthe deepening economic crisis globally.

The election of Obama was seen as adramatic event, not only in the USA but inthe world. What does it in fact mean? Whathas changed, and what has not? Answeringthe question requires exactly critical theory.For the answer is, in conventional terms,everything has changed, but as well, in criticalterms, nothing has changedand it is theability of critical theory to say what has andwhat hasnt changed that entitles it to animportant place in our thinking and action.What has changed is that the use of racism asa support for economic and social policiesthat exploit and oppress has become counter-productive, as racism is rejected by more andmore people (although not by all) as contraryto their own experiences and values. And westill have institutional racism, so that forevery dollar of wealth held by the typicalwhite family the African American family hasonly ten cents (Lui, 2009, p. A15). What hasnot changed is the underlying structure of thesociety in which the election took place,neither politicallythis was the most expen-sive campaign in the history of the USA, andthe medias role in it was enormousnoreconomicallythe Goldman Sachs crew whoare running the national treasury, and theireconomist academic minions, are running theFederal governments economic role afterObamas election as they did before, and the$700 billion bail-out for the financial sectoralready authorized will be implemented infull, if not expanded. Even the staid NewYork Times writes:

Goldmans presence in the [US Treasury] department is so ubiquitous that other bankers and competitors have given the star-studded firm a new nickname; Government Sachs. (Creswell and White, 2008, p. 1)

Another aspect of the US presidential elec-tion campaign that led up to the electionresult is noteworthy, and ties in with a majorargument I want to make here. Both partiesran under the slogan of Change; Obamaswas Change you can believe in, McCainhighlighted his maverick, non-conformist

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MARCUSE: FROM CRITICAL URBAN THEORY TO THE RIGHT TO THE CITY 187

record every chance he got. Close to 50%saw the change needed as being in one direc-tion, close to 50% saw it in another, buthardly anyone was satisfied with things asthey are. If critical urban theory is able toexpose the roots of that dissatisfaction, andshow both almost equal halves that theirdissatisfaction is with the same features of theeconomy, the politics, the society, it will havedone its job.

The other development, already unfoldingas the election took place, is the economiccrisis. I focus on the USA, but the pictureis similar globally. In the USA today, over6 million households (Credit Suisse, 2008)face mortgage foreclosure, unemployment isrising to a several decades-long high, home-less use of emergency shelters is at an all-timehigh in New York City, real wages are fallingway behind increases in productivity, the gapbetween rich and poor is growing. The finan-cial crisis seems to be spreading, to engulfmore and more people, to cause more andmore unemployment, insecurity, hunger andwant, a greater and greater dissatisfactionwith conditions as they are, with inequality,luxury in the midst of poverty, illiteracy,substantive as well as linguistic, selfishness inplace of solidarity, isolation in place of love.But I think it is not a financial crisis spread-ing to other parts of the economy that weconfront, but an economy whose contradic-tions are erupting in a very visible manner inthe financial sector, but only as manifesta-tions of much more deep-seated contradic-tions which we should not allow to beconcealed in the focus on issues of regulationor deregulation in one small excrescence of afundamentally flawed system as a whole. Theproblem is not in unregulated credit defaultswaps or out of control hedge funds; theproblem is in exploitation, domination,repression system-wide.

Fundamentally, the crisis comes from asystem that both necessarily produces grossmaterial inequality and at the same timeproduces gross insecurity and emotionaldiscontent and distortions. Greed is not anaberration of the system; it is what makes the

system go. Calling greed the profit motive isa euphemism that tries to justify a systemthat relies on greed to produce growth at theexpense of all other values, and that stiflescreativity that does not serve profit. Anti-abortion activists, religious fundamentalists,defenders of family values, are as much areflection of emotional impoverishment ashunger and homelessness are of materialdeprivation. A society one-dimensional inits driving force produces one-dimensionalpeople, and struggles to be supported bythem. The victims of the system include boththe materially deprived and the intellectuallyand socially alienated, as is explored below.

The history of the Right to the City as aslogan dealing with such problems came intowidespread usage largely out of the eventsthe theory and the practiceof May 1968 inParis, and their parallels worldwide. Furtherdiscussion requires a look at that history,what preceded it, how it compares to theevents of today.

History: before and after 1968

Crisis? Capitalism has always been a systemwith deep internal contradictions. Marxismhas had the investigation of crises at thecenter of its concerns, and its conclusions arehardly likely to be disproven by currentevents. In the 20th century, five major crises,five periods of deep-going social turmoil, canbe identified. They differ in their severity andconsequences in the respective strengthsand weaknesses of both the systems criticsand of its defendersa critical point. The fivecrises are:

1917: The crisis after the end of the First World War, and the victory of the Russian revolution, the Weimar Republic

1929: The great depression, the triumph of fascism, the New Deal

1968: The civil rights movement, the new left, the student protests, the Vietnam War

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1990: The crisis of really existing socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

2008: Todays more-than-financial crisis.

I mention three of these, 1917, 1929 and1990, only to make an often forgotten point:the range of resolutions of crisis is a broadone, not confined to the kinds of questionsthat seem to pre-empt public discoursetoday: do we regulate speculation or not, dowe increase welfare benefits or not, do weend this war or not, do we bail out this bankor this business or not, do we put up tradebarriers or take them down. Historically, thechoices are much broader. As these earliercrises have shown, at the extremes there lie,and have always lain, socialism on the oneside, barbarism, in the modern form offascism, on the other. Neither extreme seemsimminent today, if for different reasonsnotsocialism, for lack of a base that presses for itor might bring it about, and not fascism,because the forces of domination have foundsubtler and more insidious means of holdingon to power than naked violence.2 In eachcrisis, the outcome has depended, not simplyon the strength or weakness of the criticalforces (and not the quality of their criticaltheory) but also on the strengths and weak-nesses of the established system. Indeed, onekey function of critical theory may well be toexpose and evaluate both the strengths andweaknesses of the existing system and theultimate nature of its crises, thus informingpractice as to what its strategic potentialactually is, as well as analyzing the strategiesthat that practice might adopt.

After 1917, none of these crises involvedmore than sporadic violence, and all but 1929in Europe seemed in reality (if not always inthe minds of the participants) remotefrom the extremes of communism andfascism. But the crises of 1968 and 1990 weredifferent from the earlier ones in one keyregard: they did not rest on the materialbreakdown of the existing system, on thedepth of poverty or oppression or materialwant, but on the combined dissatisfaction of

broad elements of the population with thefrustrated potentials that they saw in societyin a sense, resting on injustice rather than,or in addition to, want. The contradictionbetween the reality and the potential forgreater progress undermined really existingsocialism in the Stalinist period, but thepotential was even clearer in May 1968, inParis most prominently, but in April of thatyear in universities in the USA and elsewherealso. In each case critical action represented anew element in the oppositional protest. Forthe first time on a significant scale, the agita-tion resulting from the aspirations of thealienated were linked, if tenuously and inconstant tension, with the demands of thematerially exploited: the claims of thestudents to the claims of the workers (seeMarcuse, 2008). Workers as a whole were notuniformly supportive, and the institutional-ized organs of the working class opposed theprotests; yet worker support on the groundwas strong.

On the other hand, the state against whichthe protests were directed, the rulers, thecapitalists and the underwriters of the estab-lishment, were strong. The context was notof economic crisis; the system was still, in myfathers phrase, producing the goods. Andthe goods it produced satisfied the majority;those aspiring to something more than thosegoods remained a minority. The protest wasdefeated.

Today, in 2009, we have in a sense thereverse situation. The system is shaky in itsproduction of the goods, whose deliveryrelies today more and more on financialarrangements rather than direct homeproduction within the national economy.Foreclosures are up dramatically, with closeto 4,000,000 threatened, unemployment isrising, local tax revenues and thus localgovernmental services are shrinking, publiceducation is endangered, the security ofretirements is threatened as pension fundslose large percentages of their value. Andthings are expected to get worse.

The establishments response has beenwidely and deeply unpopular. The largest

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financial institutions have taken over thenational treasury quite directly in privatehands, have in effect privatized the govern-ment (quite a reversal of the nationalization ofthe banks of which Marx wrote in theCommunist Manifesto). Goldman Sachs, oneof the largest of the private financial bankingand speculation firms, now has its membersstaffing the national treasury, distributingmultiple billions of dollars to the biggestbanks and financial institutions, thoseprecisely that are universally recognized ashaving caused the immediate crisis to whichthey are supposed to be responding. Insecu-rity is widespread and deep, and the rulers andtheir lackeys are almost apologetic in theirresponse; Alan Greenspan, as I write this, hasadmitted he overestimated the market.

Yet the protest has been subdued. Life onthe campuses barely notices the crisis. Laborunions confine themselves to asking forlimits on CEO pay. Bernie Sanders, the onesocialist member of Congress (elected as anindependentsocialist is not a label that canget you elected) speaks of nationalizing thebanks; no one listens. The media denouncethe greed of the bankers; no one blames thebanking system and its driving force, theaccumulation of profit and expansion ofcapital. The left intelligentsia speaks to itself,trying to figure out how deep the crisis is; themedia erects a wall against fundamental ques-tioning of the system. Socialism remains abad word in US electoral politics, in whichthe contenders shy away from it in unques-tioning condemnation and speak only ofregulation and renewed economic growth.

Critical urban theory can provide some illu-mination on why this situation exists. It has todo with the question of whose right to the cityis involved, who the potential actors, theagents of change, are and what moves themeither to propose or to oppose basic change.

III. Right to the City

The Right to the City is both an immediatelyunderstandable and intuitively compelling

slogan, and a theoretically complex andprovocative formulation. What does theRight to the City mean? More specifically:Whose Right are we talking about? WhatRight is it we mean? What City is it to whichwe want the right?

Henri Lefebvre popularized the slogan in1968, but he was more provocative than care-ful in its usage. The best definition he gave is:

the right to the city is like a cry and a demand. This right slowly meanders through the surprising detours of nostalgia and tourism, the return to the heart of the traditional city, and the call of existent or recently developed centralities. (Lefebvre, 1967, p. 158)

In other places he has it meandering through:

the right to information, the rights to use of multiple services, the right of users to make known their ideas on the space and time of their activities in urban areas; it would also cover the right to the use of the center. (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 34)

So: whose right, what right and to what city?

Whose right?

Whose right is a complex question, and oneas to which I think an expansion of the exist-ing discussion would be worthwhileusefulboth theoretically and in practice.

The question is a long-standing one.Herbert Marcuse struggled with it (Marcuse,1969). David Harvey (2009) recently calledattention to it in todays context:

I dont think we are in a position to define who the agents of change will be in the present conjuncture and it plainly will vary from one part of the world to another. In the United States right now there are signs that elements of the managerial class, which has lived off the earnings of finance capital all these years, is getting annoyed and may turn a bit radical. A lot of people have been laid off in the financial services, in some instances

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they have even had their mortgages foreclosed. Cultural producers are waking up to the nature of the problems we face and in the same way that the 1960s art schools were centers of political radicalism, you might find something like that re-emerging. We may see the rise of cross-border organizations as the reductions in remittances spread the crisis to places like rural Mexico or Kerala.

The analysis following is new, but I think it isconsistent with Lefebvres, and certainlywith my fathers. Lefebvres right is both acry and a demand, a cry out of necessity anda demand for something more. Those are twoseparate things. I would reformulate them tobe an exigent demand by those deprived ofbasic material and existing legal rights, and anaspiration for the future by those discon-tented with life as they see it around them,perceived as limiting their own potentials forgrowth and creativity.

The demand comes from those directly inwant, directly oppressed, those for whomeven their most immediate needs are notfulfilled: the homeless, the hungry, theimprisoned, the persecuted on gender, reli-gious, racial grounds. It is an involuntarydemand, those whose work injures theirhealth, those whose income is below subsis-tence. The cry comes from the aspiration ofthose superficially integrated into the systemand sharing in its material benefits, butconstrained in their opportunities forcreative activity, oppressed in their socialrelationships, guilty perhaps for an unde-served prosperity, unfulfilled in their liveshopes. The discussion of the role of art, andof an aesthetic revulsion against the results ofthe existing order of things, is relevant(Miles, forthcoming). For both, their one-dimensionality eats away at their humanity,and from the same source, but it does it indifferent ways.

So that there is no misunderstanding, thosedeprived even of the material necessities oflife are as entitled to, and in need of, the fullerlife to which the alienated aspire as are thealienated, and the sources of dissatisfactionfor both arise out of equally organic and

essential human needs. Erst kommt dasFressen, dann kommt die Morale, as Brechtsaid;3 but both are necessary for a human andhumane life. Where choices must be made,the demands of the deprived are entitled topriority over the fulfillment of the aspira-tions of the alienated.

To return then to whose rights are ourconcern, the demand is of those who areexcluded, the cry is of those who are alien-ated; the demand is for the material necessitiesof life, the aspiration is for a broader right towhat is necessary beyond the material to leada satisfying life. But to make the discussionclearer, let me digress briefly to a schematicdefinition of terms.4

An analysis in terms of material interests, insomewhat traditional class terms (see, forinstance, in urban terms: Marcuse, 1989) alonglines of position in the relations of production(somewhat modernized), might be:

The excluded (not in fact an accurate term,for they are in fact a part of the system,without the protections won by the work-ing class for labor, but they operate at itsmargins).

The working class, the materially exploited(including what is euphemistically calledthe middle class, i.e. white as well as bluecollar workers, skilled as well as unskilled,service as well as manufacturing workers,but underpaid and producing profit forothers)together with the excluded, wemay speak of these two groups as thedeprived.

The small business people (the individualproprietors, the small entrepreneurs, thecraftsmen).

The gentry (including the more successfulsmall business persons, professionals, thehighly paid servants of the multi-nationals).

The capitalists (owners and decision-making managers of large businessenterprises).

The establishment intelligentsia (includingmuch of the media, academics, artists andothers active in the ideological aspect ofthe production processes).

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The politically powerful (including most ofthose in or aspiring to high public office).

Looked at economically, the cry for theRight to the City here comes from the mostmarginalized and the most underpaid andinsecure members of the working class, notfrom most of the gentry, the intelligentsia,the capitalists.

An analysis in cultural terms, along linesof relation to the dominant cultural, ethnic,and gendered society and ideology, might be:

The directly oppressed (oppressed alonglines of race, ethnicity, gender, lifestyle,often called the excluded, but excludedonly in this cultural sense, often includedin an economic sense).

The alienated (of any economic class,many youth, artists, a significant part ofthe intelligentsia, in resistance to thedominant system as preventing adequatesatisfaction of their human needs).

The insecure (a shifting group, varyingwith conjunctural changes, e.g. level ofcrisis, prosperity, including much of theworking class and periodically some of thegentry).

The hapless lackeys of power (includingsome of the gentry and some of theintelligentsia).

The underwriters and beneficiaries of theestablished cultural and ideological hege-monic attitudes and beliefs.

Looked at from this point of view, thedemand for the Right to the City comes fromthe directly oppressed, the aspiration comesfrom the alienated.

Demand and aspiration, deprivation anddiscontent. The demand led to the RussianRevolution, the aspiration led to the fall ofthe Berlin wall. The demand and the aspira-tion both surfaced, rather independently, in1968 (see above), but failed to come fullytogether; the distance between the deprivedand the alienated remained. The descriptionof the World Social Forums meeting inBelem in 2009 as The Gathering of the

Distressed (Ramirez and Cruz, 2009) can beinterpreted as covering both material andcultural or intellectual distress. Overcomingthat distance, with due priority for thedeprived and attention to the alienated, ishigh on what needs to be done today.

Its crucially important to be clear that it isnot everyones right to the city with whichwe are concerned, but that there is in fact aconflict among rights that need to be facedand resolved, rather than wished away. Somealready have the right to the city, are runningit now, have it well in hand (although wellmight not be just the right word, today!).They are the financial powers, the real estateowners and speculators, the key politicalhierarchy of state power, the owners of themedia.

It is the right to the city of those who donot now have it with which we areconcerned. But that is not a useful answer. Itis necessary to know who is most deeplyaffected, who is likely to lead the fight, whowill be most likely to support it, what willtheir reasons be? Contributing to under-standing exactly who that is is a contributioncritical urban theory should attempt to make.I suggest here it is a combination of thedeprived and the discontented who will leadthe push for the Right to the City, but theissue can use a lot more attention.

Specifically, I would argue that discon-tent, and for that matter deprivation, doesnot automatically lead to support for theclaim to the right to the city for alldeprived and alienated. The threat ofdiscontent, especially when coupled withfear of unrest from the deprived and theworking class, has always worried those ontop (A specter is haunting Europe ).The effort to channel that discontent hasbeen a chief task for the lackeys of power,the manipulators of ideology, with themedia, the schools, religious institutions,and a variety of business and civic organiza-tions as their allies/targets. The results areseen in a variety of widespread emotionalgroup-based phenomena, circling aroundissues such as:

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Anti-abortion and right to life The right to hold guns Anti-tax measures Homophobia Racism Anti-immigrant sentiment Religious fundamentalism Family values Chauvinist war-mongering False patriotism Elements of sports fanaticism.

And, I would argue:

Home ownership as the American Dream.

It is tempting to use Freudian terms for theprocess, repression of discontent and itssublimation in these emotional phenomena, acathexis in which emotion is attached tothese issues and removed from more danger-ous discontents, or even realization ofdiscontent (H. Marcuse, 1955; Zizek, 2008).A direct confrontation with this repression/sublimation may have to be a very concretepart of any practical political action toachieve real change.

So I would argue people affected by thesephenomena are also among the deprived andthe discontented, but the direction of theirreaction is quite opposite. It is the basis forthe old formulation that the future liesbetween socialism and barbarismit is theythat provide the base for the barbarism, thenational socialism, but it is a base that canbe addressed in a progressive manner also.

The battle thus becomes ever more a battleof ideology, understanding, grounded inmaterial oppression but not limited to it,combining the demands of the oppressedwith the aspirations of the alienated.

The organizational form of that oppositionneeds exploration. Clearly the view that itwill be the proletariat that, as a single class,leads the struggle with the aid of some intel-lectuals is outdated. If in the process of strug-gle, social blocs, la Gramsci, can develop,something solid will have been achieved. Thepresent debates in the World Social Forum,

strikingly at its meeting in Belem about thenature of that gathering, suggest that a broadtheoretical understanding along the abovelines might help clarify that it is a singleconflict in which all participating groups areengaged, with a single objective, even thoughthe immediate form may be only that of aforum (where sympathetic groups aroundvarying issues come together to exchangeexperiences and debate), or of a coalition (atemporary coming together around specifictemporally and spatially limited issues), or ofan alliance (a more permanent coalition), orof a movement (less organized, less clear inits ultimate goals but very clear in its solidar-ity and concerned with multiple issues), anassembly (a single, or many single, comingtogethers of multiple groups for varyinglevels of common thinking, sharing, action).There are other formulations: networks,cross-network convergence, network ofnetworks (Costello and Smith, 2009), butthese are formulations that beg the questionof what kind of coming together a networkisconvergence on what, around what? Theargument here is that there is a convergenceof all groups, coalitions, alliances, move-ments, assemblies around a common set ofobjectives, which see capitalism as thecommon enemy and the right to the city astheir common cause.

What right?

The right to the city is a claim and a bannerunder which to mobilize one side in theconflict over who should have the benefit ofthe city and what kind of city it should be.It is a moral claim, founded on fundamentalprinciples of justice, of ethics, of morality, ofvirtue, of the good. Right is not meant as alegal claim enforceable through a judicialprocess today (although that may be part ofthe claim as a step in the direction of realiz-ing the Right to the City). Rather, it ismultiple rights that are incorporated here:not just one, not just a right to public space,or a right to information and transparency

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in government, or a right to access to thecenter, or a right to this service or that, butthe right to a totality, a complexity, in whicheach of the parts is part of a single whole towhich the right is demanded. The homelessperson in Los Angeles has not won the rightto the city when he is allowed to sleep on apark bench in the center. Much more isinvolved, and the concept is as to a collectiv-ity of rights, not individualistic rights.

The demand is made as a right not only ina legal sense but also in a moral sense, aclaim not only to a right as to justice withinthe existing legal system but a right on ahigher moral plane that claims a bettersystem in which the demands can be fullyand entirely met.

What city?

Lefebvre is quite clear on this: it is not theright to the existing city that is demanded,but the right to a future city, indeed notnecessarily a city in the conventional sense atall, but a place in an urban society in whichthe hierarchical distinction between the cityand the country has disappeared. Thedemand of the landless farmer in the Amazonin Brazil is not met by giving him entre to afavela in the middle of Rio de Janeiro. AsLefebvre (1967, p. 158) has it:

The right to the city cannot be conceived of as a simple visiting right or as a return to traditional cities.

And in fact not a city at all, but a whole soci-ety. The urban is only a synecdoche and ametaphor, in Lefebvre (1967, pp. 158, 45):

[The right to the city] can only be formulated as a transformed and renewed right to urban life.

this from this point on I will no longer refer to the city but to the urban.

Harvey (2003) formulates well what such acity/society might be in principle; he uses

Robert Parks phrase: the city of heartsdesire.

But first, as a precondition for pursuingwhat is desired, a city where material needsand aspirational needs are met, the needs ofthe deprived and of the alienated, clarityupto a pointshould be sought as to what sucha city would look like.

The principles that such a city wouldincorporate can be set forth in general. Theywould include concepts such as justice,equity, democracy, the full development ofhuman potentials or capabilities, to allaccording to their needs, from all accordingto their abilities, the recognition of humandifferences. They would include terms suchas sustainability and diversity, but these arerather desiderata in the pursuit of goalsrather than goals in themselves.

But there is a limit to how much benefitcan be gained from trying to spell those prin-ciples out in clear terms today.5 Such a city isnot to be predicted in detail, as Lefebvreoften said (indeed, following Marx andEngels, in opposition to the early utopianssee Engels, 1880).

To the extent that the contours of the future city can be outlined, it could be defined by imagining the reversal of the current situation, by pushing to its limits the converted image of the world upside down. (Lefebvre, 1967, p. 172)

IV. Solutions: expose, propose, politicize

Given the problems we face today, what arethe solutions? More specifically for purposesof this discussion, what is the contributionthat critical urban theory can make to thosesolutions? How can theory inform and helppracticefor, while in theory, theory andpractice are one, in practice there are realdifferences, if only that the development oftheory and the leadership in practice largelyreside in different people, different occupa-tions, different life histories. Our commontask, those privileged (to be honest about it)to work in the realm of theory, and those

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differently privileged to be able to lead in therealm of practice, our task is to make thatlink between theory and practice and tomake it productive. In other words, how dowe go from critical urban theory to radicalurban practice?

In my own field, urban planning, an exam-ination of what planning in New Orleanswas doing in the aftermath of hurricaneKatrina led to a suggestion for an approachI called Critical Planning, and outlined anapproach in three steps:6 they could besummarized in three words: Expose, Proposeand Politicize. Expose in the sense of analyz-ing the roots of the problem and makingclear and communicating that analysis tothose that need it and can use it. Propose, inthe sense of working with those affected tocome up with actual proposals, programs,targets, strategies, to achieve the desiredresults. Critical urban theory should helpdeepen the expos, help formulate responsesthat address the root causes thus exposed,and demonstrate the need for a politicizedresponse. Politicize, in the sense of clarifyingthe political action implications of what wasexposed and proposed, and supporting orga-nizing around the proposals by informingaction. Politicizing includes attention toissues of organization strategy and day-to-day politics. And where appropriate, itincludes supporting organization directlywith interventions in the media and some-times raising issues within the critics peergroups themselves, often academics.

V. The goal of the Right to the City, and how we get there?

If this is the strategy for action using criticalurban theory and practice, what exactly is itsultimate goal? So a comment or two on justwhat exactly is the vision of the societytowards which pursuing the Right to theCity implicitly reads.

Most immediately, the goal can be readfrom the main immediate contribution ofthe Right to the City: the claim is a claim to

a totality, to something whole and some-thing wholly different from the existing city,the existing society. Lefebvre and most ofthose on the streets of Paris and in the occu-pied buildings of Columbia in 1968 mightcall it socialism or communism, but it hasvarious names: a democratic society (Purcell,2008), or a society supporting strivings forlife, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,as in the US Declaration of Independence,or for liberty, equality, fraternity, as inthe French Revolution, or a just society(Fainstein, 2009) or a humane one or oneallowing for the full development of thehuman capabilities (Nussbaum, 1999; alsodeveloped by Fainstein, 2009), the potentialof humans as a species being (Marx, 1844).What all of these formulations must imply,if the analysis of critical urban theory iscorrect, is a fundamental rejection of theprevailing capitalist system. What all but themost old-fashioned utopian proposals alsohave in common is a rejection of the ideathat the most desirable future can be spelledout, designed, defined, now, in advance,except in the most broad principles. Only inthe experience of getting there, in the demo-cratic decisions that accompany the process,can a better future be formed. It is not forlack of imagination or inadequate attentionor failing thought that no more concretepicture is presented, but because, precisely,the direction for actions in the future shouldnot be preempted, but left to the democraticexperience of those in fact implementing thevision.

Can an alternative to capitalism really beaccomplished, given the proven power of theestablished system?7 Not only is the endproduct hard to imagine, but the steps lead-ing there are hard to see; anything now onthe agenda seems trivial in such a long-termperspective. Many believe that spaces ofhope, in David Harveys formulation (2000),can be found, and many such spaces indeedmove in the direction of broader change.There is perhaps general agreement, by Marx,Lefebvre, my father, Harvey and most think-ing people, that the seeds of the future must

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be found in the present. But what does that,apart from the spatial conceptualization,exactly mean?

A spatial image for the seeds of the futurecan be helpful (Pinder, 2005; Miles, 2007) andwhatever is done will surely have a spatialaspect also.8 But a spatial focus has its dangerstoo: most problems have a spatial aspect, buttheir origins lie in economic, social, politicalarenas, the spatial being a partial cause and anaggravation, but only partial. It might bebetter to see the seeds of the future as sectors.It is clearly possible to have sectors of every-day life that are free of capitalist forms,operating within the capitalist system but notof it, not dominated by it. For shorthand,those are the sectors of the economy and ofdaily life that are not operated on the profitsystem, that are within it but not of it, that arenot motivated by profit but rely on solidarity,humanity, the flexing of muscles and thedevelopment of creative impulses, for theirown sake. They will need to draw resourcesfrom the for-profit sector, preferably demo-cratically and openly through government,but their own driving force will be found ingeneral principles that are radically differentfrom those motivating the for-profit econ-omy, and principles that can have increas-ingly wider visibility and appeal.

Such sectors, such areas of activity, alreadyexist, are well known, are sought after. Theaspirations of those who are alienated fromcapitalism lead in this direction. Artistscreate, teachers teach, inventors invent,philosophers think, young people volunteer,not for profit, but because they believe that iswhat life is for, that is what they want to do.They come up against the same constraintsthat make people homeless, hungry, sick,impoverished, people whose demands thusnaturally link with the aspirations of thealienated. The ultimate goal of most socialmovements, and certainly of the Right to theCity movement, necessarily leads in thisdirection: they are not after profit, but seek adecent and supportive living environment.Profit, if a concern at all, is a means to an end,which is not high consumption, social status

or further accumulation, but rather decentliving conditions for all. Thus the culturallyalienated and the immediately deprived havea common enemy. And that is increasinglyrecognized, even if its name is not always thesame: capitalism, neoliberalism, greed, multi-nationals, power elite, the bourgeoisie, thecapitalist class. Above all, eliminating profitas means and motivation in the politicalsector, eliminating the role of wealth and thepower linked to it from public decisions, is akey requirement for both the immediatelyoppressed and the alienated.

The logic of attempting to expel that enemyfrom everyday life, one sector at a time, isappealing. We are moving in that direction,although the present leadership is only beingdragged there reluctantly, in health care and ineducation, two sectors in which the conflictover private vs. public has turned, if onlyslightly, in favor of public. The opportunity isthere in housing. The economic crisis hascertainly expanded the governments role infinance, banking, real estate, if always withinconservative ideological limits.

A critical urban theory, dedicated tosupporting a right to the city, needs to exposethe common roots of the deprivation anddiscontent, and to show the common natureof the demands and the aspirations of themajority of the people. A critical urban theorycan develop the principles around which thedeprived and the alienated can make commoncause in pursuit of the Right to the City. Howto politicize most effectively that commonground? We already have sectors of societywhere the commonality is visible, whereaction for people, not for profit, is the rule.Think of (unfortunately only some) educa-tion. Think of (unfortunately only some)health care. Think of (unfortunately onlysome) of the arts. Think of space exploration.Think of the environmental movement. Thinkof the non-profit and cooperative sector inhousing. Think of the effort to deepen democ-racy and expand participation in public deci-sions, and limit or abolish the role of moneyin elections and governmental decisions. Ineach of these, the slogan of CITIES FOR PEOPLE,

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NOT FOR PROFIT, resonates. Let that be thepolitical cry that embodies the nature of thecity to which the right is being claimed. Let itbe the cry that forms a noose about one partof the capitalist system after another. RudiDutschke, at the peak of the 1968 movementin Germany, spoke of the long marchthrough the institutions. Let us pick them off,separately or together. Let us tighten thenoose around the housing system, and moveto squeeze the profit out of it, one sector at atime. The subprime mortgage crisis, for exam-ple, could be an opportunity to move again inthat direction (Marcuse, forthcoming), associal housing was before it. Let us not beafraid to name the common goal, and thecommon enemy.

A critical urban theory, internally linkedto practice, might help get there.

Notes

1 1 I am aware that the school known as critical theory comes at the critical from a different direction, but it is one which, I believe, inevitably leads to this position. I suspect that the root of the differences between my father and Adorno in the Vietnam era was in Adornos unwillingness to deal with the issue of the seeds and movements for change, which had become my fathers major concern.

2 2 Underneath, violence still plays a role, as the level of incarceration in the USA shows, as does right-wing violence against opposition, both left-wing and/cultural non-conformists, shows.

3 3 First comes eating, then comes morality.4 4 Iris Marion Youngs five faces of oppression may

provide an alternate basis for the analysis I am proposing.

5 5 The point is discussed, and the difficulties shown, in many of the contributions to Marcuse (forthcoming).

6 6 Marcuse (2007). In a further elaboration, I am suggesting disaggregating the three steps into six: Reflect (to clarify whose values and the planners own role), Theorize (to understand the roots of the problem, whose immediate form and concrete actors should then lead to the next step), Expose (to communicate clearly the realities underlying the problem, the parties and interests involved), Propose (to put concrete proposals forward for action), Disclose (to make clear the assumptions involved, and the limits of what can be expected), and Politicize (to deal with issues of strategy and tactics involved in implementation).

7

7 For a recent honest, thoughtful, approach to an answer, see Ehrenreich and Fletcher (2009).

8 8 See the forthcoming publication of the proceedings of the Nanterre conference on Spatial Justice, and the journal that developed from it.

References

Costello, T. and Smith, B. (2009) WSF: is another world possible?, The Nation, 13 February.

Credit Suisse (2008) Foreclosures to affect 6.5 mln loans by 2012, Reuters report, 22 April, http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2233380820080422

Creswell, J. and White, B. (2008) The guys from Government Sachs, The New York Times, 19 October, Business Section.

Desai, A. (2002) We Are the Poors, Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Ehrenreich, B. and Fletcher, B. (2009) Can we still use the S word?, The Nation, March.

Engels, F. (1880) Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Moscow: Progress.

Fainstein, S. (2009) Planning and the just city, in P. Marcuse, J. Connolly, J. Novy, I. Olivo, C. Potter and J. Steil (eds) Searching for the Just City. Oxford: Routledge, pp. 1939.

Harvey, D. (2000) Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Harvey, D. (2003) The right to the city, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27(4), pp. 939994.

Harvey, D. (2009) http://www.counterpunch.org/weisbrot03062009.html

Lefebvre, H. (1991) Les illusions de la modernite, in I. Ramoney, J. Decornoy, and Ch. Brie (eds) La ville partout et partout en crise, Manire de voir, 13. Paris: Le Monde diplomatique.

Lefebvre, H. (1996 [1967]) The Right to the City, in E. Kofman and E. Lebas (eds) Writings on Cities, pp. 63184. London: Blackwell.

Lui, M. (2009) The wealth gap gets wider, The Washington Post, 23 March.

Marcuse, H. (1955) Eros and Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press.

Marcuse, H. (1969) An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.

Marcuse, P. (1989) Dual City: a muddy metaphor for a quartered city, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 13(4), pp. 697708.

Marcuse, P. (2007) Social justice in New Orleans: planning after Katrina, Progressive Planning, Summer, pp. 812.

Marcuse, P. (2008) In defense of the 60s, In These Times 32(8), pp. 3335.

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