On The Right to the City

“The question of the what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the question of what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of daily life we desire, what kinds of technologies we deem appropriate, what aesthetic we hold. The right to the city is, therefore, far more than a right of individual access to the resources that the city embodies: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city more after our heart’s desire. It is, moreover, a collective rather than an individual right since changing the city inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power over the processes of urbanization.”

After reading both Harvey’s and Lefebvre’s articles on the Right to the City and watching the video about guerrilla architecture featuring Santiago Cirugeda, it really got me thinking about what our role truly is/should be as architects. Working with many styles, contemporary architecture seems to be more focused on aesthetics or how pretty a building looks, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as we don’t lose sight of who we really design for, people. In Cirugeda’s words, as architects we need to “put people before icons.” So we can’t forgot about the functional and practical aspects of design or try and distance ourselves from the realities and what happens in cities today, both political and economic, because in reality our work has more of an impact than we care to admit or believe at times. Quite interestingly, the video shows a shift in the traditional idea that people, and we may even, might have of what an architect does, not top-down but bottom-up where everyone gets involved.

“We live in a world, after all, where the rights of private property and the profit rate trump all other notions of rights one can think of.”

I couldn’t help it, but this topic really got me thinking of the recent situation in my hometown of Beirut, Lebanon where people took to the streets across the country for about a month to denounce the political class’ corruption and grip on power amid an ever-worsening economic crisis that has been unfolding in the country. An image that I would often find plastered on the news or social media posts online depicting the situation was that of Martyrs’ Square, located right in the heart of Downtown Beirut. What once was an area ravished by the civil war that devastated the country and at one point an area overrun by cars was now being reclaimed by the citizens as a meeting place and the setting for their revolution. Due to rampant privatization and pseudo-nonexistent urban planning, Beirut has very few public spaces and even less vegetation within the city. So what was once an area that was practically dead was now being brought to life by the people reclaiming their right to the city and actually making use of the space in so many creative ways.

Martyrs' Square in the 60's

Martyrs' Square during the protests

Martyrs' Square during the protests