You Gotta Fight/For Your Right/to Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaartake in a Meaningful Urban Existence.

 

"Poor children from a demolished construction workers' slum look at their well-to-do neighbours in Hyderabad"

Caption and image from Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_the_city#/media/File:Kondapur_Hyderabad_-_view_from_Sri_Venkateswara_Nilayam.jpg

After reading both the Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey flavors of The Right to the City, I find myself in the unusual position (for me, anyway) of not really having a lot to say. I don’t really have anything to add because I don’t disagree with the sentiments of either author’s work: I do think that people have a right to urban life, so to speak, which Lefebvre defines as a life in a “place of encounter” in which the “priority of use value, inscription in space of a time promoted to the rank of a supreme resource among all resources, finds its morphological base and its practico-material realization [,] which presumes an integrated theory of the city and urban society, using the resources of science and art.”

Or, at least, I think I agree with it: it’s a definition that’s kind of clunky and light on specifics. Or maybe it actually means something super-specific and I’m just not hip to all of the vocab in these few sentences of borderline academic junkspeak (kidding, mostly).

In general, though, I agree with the sentiment that we, as a society, shouldn’t be in a place where entire socioeconomic demographics are actively or passively precluded from living with comfort and dignity in an urban environment with access to the opportunities afforded to its inhabitants.

I don't always suggest shipping container buildings as subsidized housing, but when I do I suggest that they look as good as this one does.

https://inspiration-detail-de.libproxy.clemson.edu/Download/document-download/id/5f9c47439b759

Maybe it’s because I read Lefebvre’s Right to the City so hurriedly (stressin’ about that midterm review, you know?), I’m not sure I totally understand the specifics of his vision. I mean, I get that the so-called working class are supposed to imaginatively reappropriate the figurative/literal gaps/voids in the urban/societal fabric and that this should/will be the opportunity for a radical reimagining of urban life; to reduce it to bumper-sticker wisdom, a sort of “find the gaps” + “be the change you want to see in the world”. If you add a “P.S. : You should run for office” then does that cover it?  I'm not trying to be flip; I want to know more specifically what Lefebvre’s utopia looks like. Or maybe it’s that it doesn’t matter?  That this a just a proposed framework through which the fabric of urban life can be continuously tailored?  Or is it right there in black and white and that I just don’t recognize it, that I’m looking right past it because I’ve spent my whole life living as a capitalist in a mid-sized American city and have only a theoretical knowledge of the fact that there are other ways to have a society.

Speaking of capitalism, there’s one grievance that I have with the Harvey version of The Right to the City (which, in general, I think is a very good document), and it’s the lack of distinction between the general concept of capitalism and the sort of hyper-capitalism that generates the displays of excess we’ve become accustomed to seeing at all scales from the mega-urbanization projects of Dubai to the landfills of America. The hyper-capitalism stuff is lamentable, but on smaller, more-regulated scales I think that capitalism is just fine because it is, on its face, a meritocracy (systemic injustices not withstanding) and it kind of feels like Harvey has it out for capitalism in general. For example, he writes that

“Capitalists must also discover new means of production in general and natural resources in particular, which puts increasing pressure on the natural environment to yield up necessary raw materials and absorb the inevitable waste. They need to open up terrains for raw-material extraction—often the objective of imperialist and neo-colonial endeavours.”

This isn’t a problem that’s unique to capitalism.  Sure, capitalism exacerbates it, incentives it, even, but it’s also a problem that's inherent to satisfying a growing demand with limited resources, which is a problem that isn’t going to go away so long as the population of the planet continues to grow and our available resources remain fixed.  The problem is the mindset and policies that make unsustainable hyper-capitalism and its accompanying unmanageable excess possible.  The pointing of the proverbial finger at an economic system that thrives under such conditions but is, in my opinion, not necessarily the cause of them, weakens, a little, what I think is a good piece of journalism that otherwise makes very good points about issues of paramount importance.

I guess I did have something to say about this week’s readings after all.