Lefebvre's right to the city and a radical urban citizenship: struggles around power in urban planning

This chapter provides a reading of Lefebvre’s notion of a right to the city, his radical concept of urban citizenship and his vision of a ‘renewed urban society’ by relating these to his analysis of ‘the crisis of the city’ as well as his theory on the production of space. Recognising that bringing Lefebvre’s notion of the right to the city into current urban contexts necessitates continuously renewed theorisation on ‘the urban,’ this chapter reflects briefly on contemporary urban crises before turning to discuss Lefebvre’s adoption of rights language into his dialectical utopianism. Differences and overlaps between the right to the city and human rights are discussed. The chapter ends with a discussion on the potential of planning to be a social field where struggles for a right to the city and dialectical utopian visioning to counteract the global domination of capitalist socio-spatial relations and concentrations of power may take place. We argue that Lefebvre’s call for a right to the city can be conceived to include a ‘right to planning’ based on a radical notion of urban citizenship.