Cities for People, Not for Profit : Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City

The worldwide financial crisis has sent shock-waves of accelerated economic restructuring, regulatory reorganization and sociopolitical conflict through cities around the world. It has also given new impetus to the struggles of urban social movements emphasizing the injustice, destructiveness and unsustainability of capitalist forms of urbanization. This book contributes analyses intended to be useful for efforts to roll back contemporary profit-based forms of urbanization, and to promote alternative, radically democratic and sustainable forms of urbanism. The contributors provide cutting-edge analyses of contemporary urban restructuring, including the issues of neoliberalization, gentrification, colonization, "creative" cities, architecture and political power, sub-prime mortgage foreclosures and the ongoing struggles of "right to the city" movements. At the same time, the book explores the diverse interpretive frameworks – critical and otherwise – that are currently being used in academic discourse, in political struggles, and in everyday life to decipher contemporary urban transformations and contestations. The slogan, "cities for people, not for profit," sets into stark relief what the contributors view as a central political question involved in efforts, at once theoretical and practical, to address the global urban crises of our time. Drawing upon European and North American scholarship in sociology, politics, geography, urban planning and urban design, the book provides useful insights and perspectives for citizens, activists and intellectuals interested in exploring alternatives to contemporary forms of capitalist urbanization. Front Cover 1 Cities for People, Not for Profit 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 List of figures 8 Contributors 9 Preface and acknowledgments 12 1. Cities for people, not for profit: an introduction: Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse, and Margit Mayer 14 2. What is critical urban theory?: Neil Brenner 24 3. Whose right(s) to what city?: Peter Marcuse 37 4. Henri Lefebvre, the right to the city, and the new metropolitan mainstream: Christian Schmid 55 5. The “right to the city” in urban social movements: Margit Mayer 76 6. Space and revolution in theory and practice: eight theses: Kanishka Goonewardena 99 7. The praxis of planning and the contributions of critical development studies: Katharine N. Rankin 115 8. Assemblages, actor–networks, and the challenges of critical urban theory: Neil Brenner, David J. Madden, and David Wachsmuth 130 9. The new urban growth ideology of “creative cities”: Stefan Krätke 151 10. Critical theory and “gray space”: mobilization of the colonized: Oren Yiftachel 163 11. Missing Marcuse: on gentrification and displacement: Tom Slater 184 12. An actually existing just city? The fight for the right to the city in Amsterdam: Justus Uitermark 210 13. A critical approach to solving the housing problem: Peter Marcuse 228 14. Socialist cities, for people or for power?: Bruno Flierl in conversation with Peter Marcuse 244 15. The right to the city: from theory to grassroots alliance: Jon Liss 263 16. What is to be done? And who the hell is going to do it?: David Harvey with David Wachsmuth 277 Afterword: Peter Marcuse 288 Index 289