Rights to the city: class and difference in Mumbai and Hong Kong

In a setting of globalisation, rapid urbanisation, and neoliberal state restructuring, cities around the world have witnessed a dramatic increase in urban controversies over housing and other urban services. In theory and practice, the ‘right to the city’ is often invoked to support claims of underprivileged groups in these struggles. On the one hand, this draws attention to obstacles for inhabitants to access urban spaces (appropriation); on the other hand, it suggests that inhabitants should have a meaningful contribution to all decisions that determine the development of their cities (participation). Some argue that the right to the city can organise various underprivileged groups with diverse interests behind a common agenda for ‘real’ change. We reflect on that position through a discussion of three controversies in Hong Kong and Mumbai. We conclude that in actual cities, there is often not a clear-cut differentiation between the interests of elites and underprivileged groups as both class and difference inform subject positions. Diverse groups thus assert diverse rights, resulting in conflicts between mixed coalitions of elites and underprivileged groups. Strategies to mobilise agents of change will have to speak to this heterogeneity of identities and interests in concrete settings.