Henri Lefebvre’s Urban Critical Theory: Rethinking the City against Capitalism
Release time: 2021-05-02
Francesco Biagi
Department of Political Sciences, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
ABSTRACT
In the article the author highlights the main ways of the Lefebvrian sociological analysis conceived starting from the transformations of the city in the Fordist era: From the production of urban marginality, through the proliferation of precarious living in the France of the Sixties and Seventies, to recording the gradual disappearance of the urban–rural dichotomy, that goes into an authentic spatial hegemony of urbanization processes. The goal is therefore to highlight the “urban critical theory” of Henri Lefebvre, coming to discuss the famous meaning of “right to the city,” strongly interconnected with the concept of “city as an artwork,” that is the idea of an urban space intended as horizontal and common design by those who live and inhabit in it.
KEYWORDS
Henri Lefebvre; right to the city; production of space; urban outcasts; rural space
From: International Critical Thought 2020 10 (2)
Editor: Wang Yi