They succeed in doing so largely because the states underwhich they operate are the “soft-states,” in that despite their oftenauthoritarian disposition and political omnipresence, they lack the nec-essary capacity, the hegemony and technological efficacy, to impose full

Over time, they have created massive communi-ties with millions of inhabitants, complex lifeworlds, economic arrange-ments, cultural practices and life-styles

They are also venues where people forge collective identitiesand extend their solidarities beyond their immediate familiar circles toinclude also the unknown, the strangers.

But forthose (such as the unemployed, housewives, and broadly the “informalpeople”) who lack such institutional power/settings, streets become acrucial arena to express discontent.

I like to suggest that thisnew urbanity, the city-inside-out, not only it exhibits a profound processof exclusion, it also generates new dynamics of publicness that can haveimportant implications for social and political mobilization in terms ofwhat I have described as “street politics” and “political street”

In other words, for the foreseeable future, the urbandisenfranchised are trapped in the structural web of the current capitalistsystem and the states that uphold it.

women and housewives have totake on many of the tasks traditionally assigned to men like paying bills,attending to bank business, dealing with car mechanics, daily shopping,taking children from school, or going to government offices.

Here in the city-escapes, under bridges, ingraveyards and side streets, street children have formed “flourishing”outdoor communities, some with elaborate order, discipline, and an

it is a cityshaped more by the logic of Market than the needs of its inhabitants;

The “neoliberal city,” then, is a market-driven urbanity; it is a cityshaped more by the logic of Market than the needs of its inhabitants;responding more to individual or corporate interests than public con-cerns.

reclaim their right to the city in a different fashion

the rich, now apprehen-sive of the physical presence and “social dangers” of the dispossessed,tend to seek their own enclosed and exclusive zones—the privatebeaches, exclusive neighborhoods, gated communities, securely-guardedbars, restaurants and places of sociability, work,

The “neoliberal city,” then, is a market-driven urbanity; it is a cityshaped more by the logic of Market than the needs of its inhabitants;responding

Thus, the gentrification of city centers toaccommodate global enterprises tends to push scores of low income andmiddle class families (state employees, teachers, professionals, or theworkers) to live the life of the poor in the expanding “planet of slums”and squatter areas where out-doors life constitutes an underlying feature.

heyhave spread among educated young people with higher status, aspirationsand social skills—government employees, teachers, and professionals

Neoliberalism is broadly understood as an ideology that advocatesthe economy and society be freed from the state regulations, and becontrolled, instead, by individuals and corporate bodies in accordancewith their self interests, mediated through the invisible hands of themarket

Under these conditions, ideals of urban identity, citizenship and belonging—already threatened by the spreading malaise of a neolib-eral ethic—become much harder to sustain.

Wealthy neighbourhoods provided with all kinds of services, such as exclusive schools, golf courses, tennis courts and private police patrolling the area around the clock intertwine with illegal settle-ments where water is available only at public fountains, no sanitation system exists, electricity is pirated by a privileged few, the roads become mud streams whenever it rains, and where house-sharing is the norm.

Even the incoherent, bland and monotonous suburban tract development that continues to dominate in many areas now gets its anti-dote in a ‘new urbanism’ movement that touts the sale of community and boutique lifestyles to fulfill urban dreams. This is a world in which the neoliberal ethic of intense possessive individualism, and its cognate of political withdrawal from collective forms of action, becomes the tem-plate for human socialization

the government’s right of eminent domain has been abused in order to displace estab-lished residents in reasonable housing in favour of higher-order land uses, such as condominiums and box stores.

One step towards unifying these struggles is to adopt the right to the city as both working slogan and political ideal, precisely because it focuses on the question of who commands the necessary connection between urbanization and surplus production and use.

The answer to the last question is simple enough in principle: greater democratic control over the production and utilization of the surplus.

Through a system of highways and infrastructural transformations, suburbanization and the total re-engineering of not just the city but also the whole metropolitan region, he helped resolve the capital-surplus absorption problem.

The right to the city had to mean the right to command the whole urban process, which was increasingly dominating the country-side through phenomena ranging from agribusiness to second homes and rural tourism

We live, after all, in a world in which the rights of private property and the profit rate trump all other notions of rights.

I here want to explore another type of human right, that of the right to the city.

The right to the city had to mean the right to command the whole urban process, which was increasingly dominating the country-side through phenomena ranging from agribusiness to second homes and rural tourism

to create a movement to build another kind of world—including a dif-ferent kind of urban experience.

social consequences,

The democratization of that right, and the construction of a broad social movement to enforce its will is imperative if the dispossessed are to take back the control which they have for so long been denied, and if they are to institute new modes of urbanization.

This project successfully absorbed the surplus and assured social stability, albeit at the cost of hollowing out the inner cities and generating urban unrest amongst those, chiefly African-Americans, who were denied access to the new prosperity.

The urban crisis that is affecting millions would then be prioritized over the needs of big investors and financiers.

A ‘Financial Katrina’ is unfolding, which conveniently (for the developers) threatens to wipe out low-income neighbourhoods on potentially high-value land in many inner-city areas far more effectively and speedily than could be achieved through emi-nent domain.

The right to the city, as it is now constituted, is too narrowly confined, restricted in most cases to a small political and economic elite who are in a position to shape cities more and more after their own desires.

bringing new products from housing to refrigerators and air conditioners, as well as two cars in the driveway and an enormous increase in the consumption of oil.

Raising the proportion of the surplus held by the state will only have a positive impact if the state itself is brought back under democratic control.

establishing democratic management over its urban deployment constitutes the right to the city.

contagious

Signs of rebellion are everywhere: the unrest in China and India is chronic, civil wars rage in Africa, Latin America is in ferment.

Above all, it entailed the reconfiguration of the urban infrastructure of Paris.

precludes

that the clear distinction which once existed between the urban and the rural is gradually fading into a set of porous spaces of uneven geographical development, under the hegemonic command of capital and the state.

a more insidious and cancerous progression took hold through municipal fiscal discipline, property speculation and the sorting of land-use according to the rate of return for its ‘highest and best use’.

A great deal of energy is expended in promoting their sig-nificance for the construction of a better world.

it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.

The parallels with the 1970s are uncanny—including the immediate easy-money response of the Federal Reserve in 2007–08, which will almost certainly generate strong currents of uncontrollable inflation,

This global scale makes it hard to grasp that what is happening is in principle similar to the transformations that Haussmann oversaw in Paris.

Vast infrastructural projects, including dams and highways—again, all debt-financed—are transforming the landscape.

American urban expansion partially steadied the global economy, as the us ran huge trade deficits with the rest of the world, borrowing around $2 billion a day to fuel its insatiable consumerism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

including a dif-ferent kind of urban experience.

this process played a crucial role in stabilizing global capitalism after 1945

o create a movement to build another kind of world—including a dif-ferent kind of urban experience

he helped resolve the capital-surplus disposal problem by setting up a proto-Keynesian system of debt-financed infrastructural urban improvements.

The economic situation he dealt with by means of a vast programme of infrastructural investment both at home and abroad.

The system worked very well for some fifteen years, and it involved not only a transformation of urban infrastructures but also the construc-tion of a new way of life and urban persona.

it entailed a radical transfor-mation in lifestyles

it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.

Thus, indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself.

I argue here that urbanization has played a particularly active role

Capitalists must also discover new means of production in general and natural resources in particular, which puts increasing pressure on the natural environment to yield up necessary raw materials and absorb the inevitable waste.

The result of contin-ued reinvestment is the expansion of surplus production at a compound rate

since urbanization depends on the mobiliza-tion of a surplus product, an intimate connection emerges between the development of capitalism and urbanization.

The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.

sutprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals,

There is no risk, therefore, that the increase of power created by the panoptic machine may degenerate into tyranny;

Panopticon

The Panopticon, on the other hand, must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men.

Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up.

this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it;

space of exclusion

space of exclusion

the assignment to each individual of his 'true' name, his 'true' place, his 'true' body, his 'true' disease.

major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the auto-millic functioning of power.

plague

It lays down for each individual his place, his body, his disease and his death, his well-being, by means of an omnipresent and omniscient power that subdivides itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even to the ultimate determination of the individual, of what characterizes him, of what belongs to him, of what happens to him.

magistrates have complete control over medical treatment

Everything that may be observed during the course of the visits -deaths, illnesses, complaints, irregularities-is noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates.

those who live overlooking the courtyard will be allo-cated a window looking onto the street at which no one but they may show themselves);

Only the intendants, syndics and guards will move about the streets and also, between the infected houses, from one corpse to another, the 'crows', who can be left to die: these are 'people of little SUbstance who carry the sick, bury the dead, clean and do many vile and abject offices'. It is a segmented, immobile, frozen space.

power of mind over mind

penitentiary

It is polyvalent in its applications;

In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unveri-fiable.

regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life

Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal); and that of coercive assignment, of differential distribution (who he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized; how he is to be recognized; how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way, etc.).

3. Panopticism

had placed herself, a female, in the role of ques­tioning the right of these males to enter the bar.

It is an affront to be mistaken for a boy instead of the man he so obviously is.

They came looking for girls, for action, and they feel no compulsion, once inside this place, to remain.

This does not mean women are not highly valued at Brady's Bar; in one sense they are required ifthe ceremonial life is to function properly.

As our research progressed we began to discover more and more ways that space reinforced the way our culture defines masculinity and femininity. Territoriality reflected the basic definitions of sexual gender as expressed in the division of labor and social structure of Brady's Bar.

You know my uncle doesn't like women behind his bar!"

Wherever people work, live, or play they stake claims on space and attach meanings to them.

Inside our houses space is divided up and allocated so that even young children mayjj;el a kind of private owner­ship over certain territory.

culturally learned responses

Territoriality in humans refers to the means by which space is defined, allo­cated, and maintained; it is a cultural phenomenon.

The ebb and flow of social life in every society occurs in the context of place:

The dispersal of these people in Brady's is not random, and where people choose to sit or stand in Brady's is closely related to their sex and status in the Brady social hierarchy.

Waitresses must rely on the bartenders to give them the things they need to serve customers at the tables.

"If you leave those there it will make a mess and make me spill things. That's one reason we don't let you bitches behind the bar."

The invis­ible barrier between the bar and the tables is extremely difficult to cross and for most girls, sitting at the bar is trespassing: only the waitresses seem to have the right or the audacity to do so.

Sandy, as well as the other girls, adapt to ritual displays such as these while most female customers would find it intimidating to find themselves in the midst of such male-oriented talk.

It used to embarrass me at first but you get used to it.

she is merely an artifact used by men to display their prowess.

Territorial displace­ment is often found in primate societies such as baboon troops.

When it is crowded, they don't complain, but customers often choose to stand in the aisles and on the steps when there is other space available.

The girls unanimously agree that this is a constant problem in their work and they feel helpless to combat it.

The girls hesitate to use such tactics against some men and fall back on feminine displays of weak­ness and helplessness to get them to move.

the customer won't leave her alone and she must do her best to ignore him....

emphasizes the importance of the use of space in social interaction and posits a relationship between social status and space.

Three policemen are in the kitchen drinking.

"Hey, watch it. There's a lady present."

it is easier and more comfortable for women to simply avoid the bar altogether.

sentient

A man would never order a frozen daiquiri, and women seldom order scotch or bourbon."

Male Territory," but such a claim is written into the customs and mores that guide male and female behavior alike.

Territoriality reflected the basic definitions of sexual gender as expressed in the division of labor and social structure of Brady's Bar.

"literally thousands of experiences teach us unconsciously that space communicates. Yet this fact would probably never have been brought to the level of consciousness ifit had not been realized that space is orga­nized differently in each culture.'"

Wherever people work, live, or play they stake claims on space and attach meanings to them.

such perceptions are always filtered through the culture we have learned.

likely smile, listen to his jokes, and play the coy flirting games

attach meaning to space in ways that reflect their cultural knowledge of the world.

filtered through the culture we have learned.

The physical world is not presented to all humans in the same way

Phenomenological Perspectives

people expect not to have privacy

enable and constrain certain types of behaviors

spatial environ- ment as integral to the psychological concept of the self

panopticon

Society produces build- ings that maintain and/or reinforce its social forms.

Perhaps of more interest to anthropologists is the current exploration of the meaning of privacy as a cultural construct of Western society

Gregor suggests that in a society where people expect not to have privacy, the construction of solid housing or the separation of residences would increase suspicions and hostil- ity (144)

Ul- timately, the spatial dimension of behavior has communicative features: "Space speaks

Conceptualized as a bubble surrounding each individual, personal space varies in size according to the type of social relationships and situation

Psychocultural approaches, developed primarily by environmental psychologists, have inte- grated the concept of culture into explorations of the spatial dimensions of human behavior and human interactions with the built environmen

imbue

In addition to providing shelter against the elements, the par- ticular forms themselves were seen to mirror the cultures that produced them.

Such relationships are interactive, in that people both create, and find their behavior influenced by, the built environmen

Architecture is typically defined to encompass the built forms, often monumental, characteristic of civilizations, and self-consciously designed and built by specialists

broadest sense to any physical alteration of the natural environmen

abstract concep

by humans

through construction by human

The spatial order, including the built environment, is not only the product of classificatory collective representations based on social forms but also a model for reproducing the social forms themselve

Another began to examine built forms as metaphors for complex social and symbolic relationships: the Irish country- men's "west room" (21) or the French peasant "parlour" (393).

holistic

Architects continue to be fascinated with finding and describing parallels between symbolic structures and architectural forms.

regarding the interactions of the built environment with social organization and spatial behavior

when the built environment ceases to accommodate behavioral requirements, people seek to correct the problem through construction, renovation, or moving to a different building

A system of relationships among the physical attributes is often shown to imitate or represent-by their configuration, content, and associations-conscious and unconscious aspects of social life.

However, not every change in built form causes or is caused by a corresponding change in social behavior (49, 326).

In the youngest, least urbanized city of Zaria he finds most dwelling construction stemming from generational changes in size and com- position of the resident kin group (341). In the two older cities where land and housing are scarce, he finds most new construction is to accommodate renters who make up close to half of the household population

Another key area of research has focused on the relationship between individual or group identity and housing

Some combine structuralist interpretations of house form and culture with the metaphor of the human body

Ritual performances may also be viewed as the principal mechanism by which meaning in the built environment is activated (175) or as the key to investing domestic spaces with meaning and transforming their meaning

Other studies have focused on how ritual activities can create or recreate community boundaries

Cogni- tive and linguistic approaches consider the built environment in terms of systems of knowledge and understanding

In fact, he finds privacy is achieved more often through rules regulating interpersonal behavior rather than by direct manipu- lation of the environment

This research has been important in breaking down conceptual boundaries between tradi- tional disciplinary approaches to the built environmen

Particularly noteworthy are studies on the struggle over recreational space in Worcester parks (328), the relationship of the automobile to the reorganization of rural American space (176), the changing use of space in charity hospitals (330), and the American depart- ment store (30).

relationship of power and space

illustrates how architecture as an institu- tion contributes to the maintenance of power of one group over anothe

Rabinow links the growth of modem forms of political power with the evolution of aesthetic theories and shows how the

Much research in social production has focused primarily on theoretical development, or, when it has focused on empirical details, deals with them at an abstract level.

structural-functionalis

how culture generates built form (306, 307) and explores how meaning is transmitted as nonverbal communication through the built environmen

manifestation of culture

last several decades,

society and culture and the built environment persisted

"The rightness of the form depends . .. on the degree to which it fits the rest of the ensemble"

The Built Environment and Spatial Form