The Right to the City as a Vehicle for Social Change

Over the past few centuries, urbanization has followed a cyclical trajectory of centralized neoliberal preeminence followed by periods of social and urban revolution.  Harvey relates this pattern to the capitalist pursuit of economic surplus and the social claim on maintaing a collective right to the city.

The latest struggle involves the growing economic inequality that has accompanied the age of globalization.  Neoliberal policies and the pursuit of economic surplus absorption have implications for the social makeup of our future cities.  The working class is being slowly pushed out of the center city.  This pattern of displacement threatens not only the look and feel of the city, but the ability of our society to achieve social reform.

Cities have long been places of collective action and social change.  Social movements often originate in urban spaces and cities become a vehicle for social change.  The Occupy Movement suggests that the relationship between cities and social movements is starting to change.  As urban landscapes become privatized and the poor are displaced to the urban periphery, the city is losing its function as a place of protest and reform.  This phenomenon provides insight on the evolution of cities, but it is also, in and of itself, a cause for social action.