Claiming the "Right to the City" Beyond the City: The Role of Agrarian Social Movements

• In Event: 438 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology. Questioning the City: New Directions in Urban Theory

Abstract

The Right to the City claims for a collective right to shape space by those who inhabit it. It was proposed by Henri Lefebvre as a cry and demand to create an alternative urban life to that governed by the logics of exchange and profit. In this article, I discuss the spatial scope of the Right to the City concept, and argue that it exceeds the boundaries of the city. More concretely, I examine the role of social movements acting beyond traditional city boundaries, such as La Via Campesina. My contention is that the social struggles taking place beyond city limits, such as that of La Via Campesina, constitute a fundamental part of the possibility to realize the Right to the City. After outlying the Right to the City concept, I analyze Lefebvre’s conception of the urban and its contemporary significance to understand the potential spaces where struggles for this claim can and do take place. I conclude that struggles outside city limits are not only fundamental for the realization of the Right to the City, but they also have expanding possibilities to communicate and enact this claim.

Author

• Angela Serrano Zapata, University of Wisconsin-Madison