The right to the city?

[An archist]

Prof. Erik Swyngedouw talks about the right to the city:

http://public.citymined.org/29_jan_Swyngedouw.ogg

Admin note: the link above prompts a file download.

- August

Moderator note: I fixed a typo; the thread title was confusing otherwise. Also, could you please provide your own response and / or explanation to the above link? Not everyone wants to / can listen to the audio file.
-Dean

[An archist]

He's a professor, so he likes to use big words, but he's a good speaker and it's pretty interesting.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have a thread on this subject:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/housing-issues-and-t110969/index.html

But I'm much more concerned about tenants rights than the usual social housing mantra.

[An archist]

But he's not just talking about housing issues, like social housing or tenants rights, he's talking about social geaography.
Social struggles today are almost exclusively being fought in cities, and cities are more and more being designed to curb those struggles and to make a clearer division between the people that are a part of society and those who aren't.

[GX.]

I did a project for my urban geography class on political ecology that utilized a lot of Swyngedouw's work. His writing on Marxist urban political ecology along with Heynan, Kaika, and Castro is pretty useful. The concept of right to the city has its roots in Lefebvre if I'm not mistaken but his work has influenced a lot of urban theory (I would recommend for starters, Harvey's Social Justice and the City). An archist is right, the right to the city is about the right to control and social production of urban space.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have a suspicion here that identity politics more than class politics drives the "right to the city" struggle. There are tenants in rural areas too.

[GX.]

I have a suspicion here that identity politics more than class politics drives the "right to the city" struggle.
You should probably suspend your judgement until you know what you're talking about.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Actually, I am open to suggestions myself (please list demands), since I have yet to write programmatic commentary on tenants' rights and "Right to the City" in general. That's why I only said that I have suspicions.

All I know so far is that the left should prioritize tenants' rights and generally dealing with absentee landlordism over "social housing."

[An archist]

I have a suspicion here that identity politics more than class politics drives the "right to the city" struggle. There are tenants in rural areas too.
How so?
Personally I don't see it, I do see a lot of city planning that favors the rich, such as nice, open squares, with practically nothing on them, wich are nice to look ate, but where you can't do anything and where homeless people are chased away.
Tunnels under stations are being made so that the wind blows through it easily and it's too uncomfortable to sleep in, benches are made so that they're nice to sit in, but impossible to sleep on, cheap housing is being destroyed to make way for prestige projects and yuppie housing, etc.
What does struggling against that have to do with identity politics?