Reflections On The Right To The City

Abstract

The notion of the right to the city comes from the French Marcel François Lefebvre but, if I wanted a one sentence quote, I would prefer David Harvey’s, which states that the ‘right to the city is the right to remake, to transform the city and be transformed in it by ourselves’. In return of that how do we make the city and how does the city remake us? In my opening keynote I want to talk about some of the responses to the pandemic but also about some of the threats that loom on the horizon in the post-pandemic city. Doing so will hopefully set the stage for conversations about possible interventions, and where do we choose our points of leverage in which to remake the city.