Lecture 13: Everyday Life: Right to the city

Question 1

Top-down politics

Answer 1

Strategy
Political decisions made from ‘above’
e.g. Government, corporations, institutions
Voting is a single point of influence

Question 2

Bottom-up politics

Answer 2

Tactics
Protests & campaigns
Consumer choices e.g. boycotts
Clicktivism, petitions

Question 3

The Carceral city

Answer 3

Power, then, is a process rather than a thing that is exercised […] power was like a network of relations in a state of tension (Knox & Pinch p.47) 
Foucault Discipline & Punish (1975)
The Panopticon 
Micropowers 
Disciplinary society 
But what about agency?

Question 4

Right to the City: Theory

Answer 4

Lefebvre “Right to the city” in Writing on Cities ([1968] 1996)
“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.” Harvey 2008
The urban is an environment in which to contest social power

Question 5

Urban Social Movements

Answer 5

Castells The City and The Grass Roots 1983
Political organisation by place not socio-demographic
Post-fordist political organisation
Mission district San Francisco (Castells 1983 106-137)

Question 6

Gender & Fear

Answer 6

Geography of Women’s Fear (Valentine 1989)
A Patriarchal society limits women’s access to the city via the fear of male violence
E.g. Victim blaming Lindsey Kushner QC
Everyday Sexism Project
Hollaback

Question 7

Squatting

Answer 7

Squatting and the birth of the Housing co-operative
Villa Road Brixton
BBC Property is Theft 2006
“reanimate the city” Towards a Global Geography of Squatting (Vasudevan 2011:355)
From civil to criminal

Question 8

Participatory Planning

Answer 8

Neighbourhood and community consultations
Bringing locals into process
Criticisms – tokenistic? 
Michael Edwards
Loretta Lees 
Just Space Network

Question 9

Public Space?

Answer 9

Is Public Space under threat?
Exclusion of people from Public Space Knox and Pinch 48
The Politics of Public Space (Low & Smith 2015)
Homeless spikes
Occupy
Skateboarding City and Space (Borden 2001)

Question 10

Cottaging, parks & sexuality

Answer 10

“continuing danger of prosecution and police harassment means that within cities homosexuals have tended to meet in secret” (Knox and Pinch 242)
Cottaging
Emergence of queer space
Knox & Pinch “Sexuality and the city” 11.2
Andersson Heritage Discourse… (2011)

Question 11

Ethical consumption

Answer 11

Local economy
Transition towns e.g. Totnes, Bristol
Farmers markets
Mobilising consumer decisions to effect political change 
Consuming Ethics… (Barnett et al 2011) 
Consuming Authenticity Zukin (2008)