"From Protest Marches to City Squares and Parks: The Fight for Urban Commons", Problématique: Journal of Political Studies, no. 15, 2013, pp. 3-15. (original) (raw)

Uitermark, J., W. Nicholls and M. Loopmans (2012) Cities and social movements. Theorizing beyond the right to the city, Environment and Planning A 44(11), 2546 – 2554

Cities and social movements: theorizing beyond the right to the city Cities breed contention. Social movements usually express themselves in cities, but cities have nevertheless been seen merely as a backdrop, as the empty canvas on which social movement activity unfolds. We maintain that the city is constitutive of social movements. The defi ning features of cities-density, size, and diversity (Wirth, 1938)-provide the basic elements for contention to develop. Because cities are dense, they are likely to trigger confl icts over space. Because they are large, they have suffi cient numbers to sustain organizations of even small minorities. And because cities are diverse, they become the laboratories where new ties are forged and the battlegrounds where competing demands vie for domination. Contention thus emerges from the microinteractions between large numbers of diverse people living in close proximity. Social movements crystallize when people organize to collectively claim urban space, organize constituents, and express demands. Contention and movements emanate from cities but also stretch outwards as activists broker relations between local and their more geographically distant allies. The recent series of protests demonstrate how the urban is uniquely conducive of contention and reveals the linkages that connect contention between different locales ). All over the world, protesters occupied central areas, formed relations among themselves, and expressed their demands for equality and liberty. During the Arab revolutions, relational and cognitive connections permitted activists in Tripoli and Bahrain to imagine their struggles in very similar ways to those in Cairo, in spite of very different and uneven political opportunities, mobilization capacities, and cultures (Lopes de Souza and Lipietz, 2011). This movement then inspired protesters in Spain to take to the squares, which inspired Occupy Wall Street, which in turn spiraled into the global-yet geographically uneven (Uitermark and Nicholls, 2012)-Occupy movement.

Cities and social movements: theorizing beyond the right to the city

Cities and social movements: theorizing beyond the right to the city Cities breed contention. Social movements usually express themselves in cities, but cities have nevertheless been seen merely as a backdrop, as the empty canvas on which social movement activity unfolds. We maintain that the city is constitutive of social movements. The defi ning features of cities-density, size, and diversity (Wirth, 1938)-provide the basic elements for contention to develop. Because cities are dense, they are likely to trigger confl icts over space. Because they are large, they have suffi cient numbers to sustain organizations of even small minorities. And because cities are diverse, they become the laboratories where new ties are forged and the battlegrounds where competing demands vie for domination. Contention thus emerges from the microinteractions between large numbers of diverse people living in close proximity. Social movements crystallize when people organize to collectively claim urban space, organize constituents, and express demands. Contention and movements emanate from cities but also stretch outwards as activists broker relations between local and their more geographically distant allies. The recent series of protests demonstrate how the urban is uniquely conducive of contention and reveals the linkages that connect contention between different locales ). All over the world, protesters occupied central areas, formed relations among themselves, and expressed their demands for equality and liberty. During the Arab revolutions, relational and cognitive connections permitted activists in Tripoli and Bahrain to imagine their struggles in very similar ways to those in Cairo, in spite of very different and uneven political opportunities, mobilization capacities, and cultures (Lopes de Souza and Lipietz, 2011). This movement then inspired protesters in Spain to take to the squares, which inspired Occupy Wall Street, which in turn spiraled into the global-yet geographically uneven (Uitermark and Nicholls, 2012)-Occupy movement.

"The Challenges of Urban Activism in the New Neoliberal Context"

2014

El objetivo de este trabajo es investigar los retos que enfrenta el activismo urbano contemporáneo en el nuevo contexto neoliberal. Este contexto típicamente occidental se caracteriza por una creciente atmósfera de consenso que es 'post-política' y 'post-crítica'. En la práctica artística, la 'política' y la 'crítica' han sido más y más olvidado por varias 'vueltas éticas'-que han sido continuamente recuperado para servir el dictado neoliberal de la omni-economización. Mecanismos de recuperación cada vez más astutos-como la incorporación de artistas y activistas en la reestructuración de operaciones de aburguesamientos-se han aprovechado de los efectos intrínsecos de despolitizar a la más reciente "vuelta ética". La definición de Jacques Rancière de lo "político" como una reconfiguración disensual del statu quo es fundamental para calibrar y conectar a tierra la dimensión política del activismo urbano. Además, su definición de 'democracia' justifica los desafíos políticos que pudiesen interrumpir a tecnocrática "buen gobierno". Para situar la más reciente "vuelta ética", movimientos y tendencias históricas dentro de las disciplinas del arte, la arquitectura y el urbanismo son investigados con respecto a sus ambiciones políticas, componente utópico y de los procesos de recuperación que se han convertido a menudo instantánea e incluso preventiva. Ciertas disposiciones fundamentales se recomiendan para el activismo urbano dentro de un enfoque pluralista. La definición de Rancière de "lo político" es la base para la articulación de activismo tanto conceptual como táctico, mientras que el 'utopismo dialéctico' de David Harvey sugiere un modelo para la integración de la utopía. La máxima de Francis Alÿs 'a veces' ilustra el potencial de la ambigüedad inherente a los enfoques artísticos. Estrategias contemporáneas de disenso, sobre-identificación, oscilación y entrelazado y espacialización pueden ser eficaces. Y, mientras que una disposición holístico transdiciplinaria es una brújula esencial, la disciplinariedad se puede emplear estratégicamente. La eficacia marginal del activismo urbano es una condición estructural y no debe distraer la atención de la amenaza mucho mayor de despolitización. Esta amenaza se ve agravada por el aumento de la sincronización de los dominios, los objetivos y los intereses de los capitalistas neoliberales, los tecnócratas, los artistas, los profesionales alternativos y los 'creativos'. Para mantener una actitud crítica y resistir a la recuperación, activistas urbanos pueden combinar las claras definiciones de Rancièreian de "lo politico" y de "la democracia" con una sofisticación tanto en la disposición como en la estrategia a través de integraciones hibridados de utopismo dialéctico, la ambigüedad, la ambivalencia, el disenso, la 'sobre-identificación', la autonomía y la espacialización disciplinaria, teniendo cuidado de centrarse tanto en lo residual como en el núcleo de la sociedad. Palabras clave: activismo urbano, despolitización, vueltas éticas, la política, la recuperación

To Transform Society After Our Hearts Desire: Social Uprising and the Right to the City

This essay analyzes the social uprising that developed in Colombia in 2021, focusing on the city of Pereira, located in the Coffee Region. Theoretically, this essay uses Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city and the production of space theory in analyzing the origin and development of the social uprising, focusing mainly on ordinary people production of counter-hegemonic spaces.

City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy

2017

What do the recent urban resistance tactics around the world have in common? What are the roles of public space in these movements? What are the implications of urban resistance for the remaking of public space in the "age of shrinking democracy"? To what extent do these resistances move from anti- to alter-politics? City Unsilenced brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars and scholar-activists to examine the spaces, conditions, and processes in which neoliberal practices have profoundly impacted the everyday social, economic, and political life of citizens and communities around the globe. They explore the commonalities and specificities of urban resistance movements that respond to those impacts. They focus on how such movements make use of and transform the meanings and capacity of public space. They investigate their ramifications in the continued practices of renewing democracies. A broad collection of cases is presented and analyzed, including Movimento Passe Livre (Brazil), Google Bus Blockades San Francisco (USA), the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) (Spain), the Piqueteros Movement (Argentina), Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong), post-Occupy Gezi Park (Turkey), Sunflower Movement (Taiwan), Occupy Oakland (USA), Syntagma Square (Greece), Researchers for Fair Policing (New York), Urban Movement Congress (Poland), urban activism (Berlin), 1DMX (Mexico), Miyashita Park Tokyo (Japan), 15M Movement (Spain), and Train of Hope and protests against Academic Ball in Vienna (Austria). By better understanding the processes and implications of the recent urban resistances, City Unsilenced contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the role and significance of public space in the practice of lived democracy.

Urban Social Movements and the Right to the City: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Urban Mobilization

VOLUNTAS, 2018

This paper introduces the special issue and explains the diversity as well as common features of mobilization practices present in cities around the world. The paper starts with presenting the specificity and history of urban movements worldwide, as well as the development of ‘right to the city’ frame. Drawing on the existing literature, it focuses on presenting different forms of urban activism and interpretations of ‘right to the city’ slogan. This paper strives to fuse the framework of social movements as networks (Diani, in: Diani, McAdam (eds) Social movements and networks, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 299–318, 2003) of challengers (Gamson in The strategy of social protest, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, 1990) with the concepts of diffusion and translation of ideas, borrowed from Finnemore and Sikkink (Int Org 52(4):887–917, 1998). It also illustrates the application of the theoretical concepts of incumbents and challengers (Gamson 1990), organizational platform and norm life cycle (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) as well as the development on movement networks within and between localities (Diani in The cement of civil society: studying networks in localities, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015). The theoretical model helps to explain the rapid global spread of the notion of the ‘right to the city.’ The paper concludes with a discussion of the urban context, both ‘glocal’ and global, as an arena of social mobilization around different aspects of the ‘right to the city.’

Social Movements in Urban Society: The City as A Space of Politicization

Urban Geography, 2013

Recent anti-systemic social movements have illustrated the central role of cities in social movement mobilization. We not only highlight the characteristics of urban social relations that make cities fertile ground for mobilization, but also point to the disjunctures between the geographies and spatialities of social relations in the city, and the geographies and spatialities of many systemic processes. Struggles for a more just society must consider the broad geographies and spatialities of oppression, which we illustrate with a brief analysis of the Occupy movement. Finally, we introduce the next five articles in this special issue, all illustrating the importance of the geographies and spatialities of urban social struggle. [