The Right to the City

Battle of the Bailout: The Fight For The City 2008



The Right to the City, David Harvey, New Left Review, September-October 2008

Examining the link between urbanization and capitalism, David Harvey suggests we view Haussmann’s reshaping of Paris and today’s explosive growth of cities as responses to systemic crises of accumulation—and issues a call to democratize the power to shape the urban experience.

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David Harvey: The Right to the City / Sustainable Cities

The question of what kind of city we want cannot be separated from what kind of people we want to be. David Harvey invites all manner of social movements to assert their 'right to the city' - the right to re-make the city in a different image.

Theory Talk #20: David Harvey

David Harvey on the Geography of Capitalism, Understanding Cities as Polities and Shifting Imperialisms



Right to the City Alliance

Right to the City (RTTC) is a newly formed alliance of base building organizations from cities across the country as well as researchers, academics, lawyers, and other allies. We came together in January of 2007 to build a united response to gentrification and the drastic changes imposed on our cities. We stand together under the notion of a Right to the City for all.

Right to the City offers a framework for resistance and a vision for a city that meets the needs of working class people. It connects our fights against gentrification and displacement to other local and international struggles for human rights, land, and democracy.

We are coming together under a common framework to increase the strength of our community organizations and our collective power. Our goal is to build a national urban movement for housing, education, health, racial justice and democracy.

Principles of Unity for the Right to the City Alliance

1. Land for People vs. Land for Speculation
2. Land Ownership
3. Economic Justice
4. Indigenous Justice
5. Environmental Justice
6. Freedom from Police & State Harassment
7. Immigrant Justice
8. Services and Community Institutions
9. Democracy and Participation
10. Reparations
11. Internationalism
12. Rural Justice

Building Power in the City: Reflections on the Emergence of the Right to the City Alliance and the National Domestic Worker’s Alliance / Harmony Goldberg / In the Middle of a Whirlwind

Citizenship and the Right to the Global City: Reimagining the Capitalist World Order (PDF) / Mark Purcell

Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant (PDF) / Mark Purcell

In the Middle of a Whirlwind

Will you join us in the middle of a whirlwind?

In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements

A one-off online journal of theory, art, activism and organizing out now!

Coordinated by: Team Colors Collective

Published by: The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Press

In the Middle of a Whirlwind (Whirlwinds) inquires into current organizing efforts in the United States, and through that process, assembles a strategic analysis of current political composition as a tool for building political power.

Whirlwinds' strategic context is this summer's RNC and DNC protests; through these documents and the discussions that erupt from them we hope to directly impact the anti-Convention organizing. In a larger sense, and in the long-term, Whirlwinds is intended to provide a set of useful documents for contemporary radical organizing. Each essay and interview addresses the issues of movement, working class power and composition, and/or gives strategic insight into organizing, and the strengths and weaknesses of current movement/s in the U.S.

A Letter Among Friends: A Whirlwinds Introduction / Conor Cash, Craig Hughes & Kevin Van Meter/ Team Colors Collective

Team Colors News & Events

Team Colors @ MySpace

Making Policy Public

Making Policy Public / The Center for Urban Pedagogy

CUP's new series of fold-out posters uses innovative graphic design to explore and explain public policy. Making Policy Public is published twice a year, and each poster is the product of a commissioned collaboration between a designer and an advocate.

How It Works

While the effects of public policy are widespread, the discussions around these policies are anything but. This series aims to make information on public policy truly public: accessible, meaningful, and shared. By calling on designers to work with advocates to find new ways to make policy public, CUP aims to add vitality to crucial debates about our future. Making Policy Public facilitates new collaborations across the fields of design, education, and public policy by creating opportunities for designers to engage social issues without sacrificing experimentation and for organizations to better reach their constituencies through design.

Download 2008 Policy Briefs

The Cargo Chain



The Cargo Chain is an organizing tool for longshore workers that shows the players and pressure points in today’s globalized shipping network. How do commodities get from factory to shopping mall? Who really has the power to move today’s global economy? This pamphlet was produced through a collaboration between the Longshore Workers Coalition, Labor Notes (a quarterly journal of labor journalism and research), cartographer Bill Rankin, and the graphic design office Thumb.

Social Security Risk Machine



Social Security Risk Machine explains the mechanics of this “social machine”: how it works, why it was created, where the money comes from and where it goes. Most importantly, the poster shows the many adjustments that can be made to keep the machine running. This poster was written by Sam Stark and designed by David Reinfurt and Damon Rich.

SEE ALSO:

Understanding the Farm Bill / Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)



The U.S. Farm Bill leaves a huge footprint on the U.S. and the world. As Washington gears up for the debate, IATP analyzes what's at stake.

Via Social Design Notes and IATP's Ag Observatory

A Call To Farms / Midwest Radical Culture Corridor

A CALL TO FARMS: Continental Drift through the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor

Featuring the words of Claire Pentecost, Jessica Lawless and Sarah Ross, Lisa Bralts-Kelly, Brett Bloom and Bonnie Fortune, Ryan Griffis, Mike Wolf, Martha Boyd and Naomi Davis, Rebecca Zorach, Nicolas Lampert, The Langby Family, Eric Haas, Sarah Holm, Brian Holmes, Dan S. Wang, mIEKAL aND, and Sarah Kanouse

FREE Download (PDF)

Designed by The Heavy Duty Press, offset printed at Bookmobile
8.5 x 6.75", 60 pages plus cover, first printing: 500 copies, $10
Available soon at the Heavy Duty Etsy Store.

MRCC & Continental Drift Resources

MRCC Blog

MRCC Drift @ Flickr

"The Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor in the Recent Past and the Distant Futures" / Brian Holmes

"Finding, Being the Radical Midwest" / Dan S. Wang

The MRCC Schedule

Continental Drift & 16Beaver

"Songs of Returning, Both Silent and Aloud" (The Domestic Struggle Part Threee) @ Art of This
Minneapolis, Minnesota
August 23 - September 7, 2008

"The Audacity Of Desperation"
Urbana, Illinois
May 7 - June 15, 2008

The Missing Plaque Project

History can be a tool for social change. It is often said that the victors of history write the history books in their favor. Some stories are promoted, and others are left to dwindle in obscurity. The Missing Plaque Project tries to stand as a force to stop this from happening, by shedding light on the hidden histories.

The project is based in Toronto, and has dedicated itself to changing the way we think about Toronto's history. The city's history is often portrayed as being conservative, British and boring. However, that is only part of the truth. People have lived in the area for thousands of years, but most people think of it as a young city with very little history. It is not that nothing is known of life here before the British set up shop, in 1793; rather those stories are not given the attention they deserve.

Another element to how Toronto's history is portrayed is that anything bad that happened in the city took place long in the past and that since multiculturalism was "invented" in the 1970's everything has been "honky dory". To cast this image many stories have been ignored, including the Bathhouse Raids (1981), the Yonge Street Riot (1992), and the treatment of homeless people.

But why are some histories overlooked? Racism and other biases are partly to blame. Another part of it is the result of efforts to always portray Toronto in a good light, or efforts to use history as a tool to promote tourism or to increase property values. Another part is that many of the people who do work around the city's history come from a narrow background and happy to focus on the history of the British and the rich. Many of them are interested in what most people find banal. Often are happy to look at the history of buildings in the city rather than the people who lived here, and the social turmoil of the past.

Most Torontonians don't find the history of their city relevant to their lives. The Missing Plaque Project attempts to show how our history is relevant to us today. The project does all it can to get people interested and thinking about our cities history. Although the project has began to use a variety of mediums, it started as a project to put up posters about little-known histories.



The project started on a freezing cold December night in 2002. After spending the evening at Kinko's, the founder of the project, Tim Groves, set out for Christie Pits with a steaming bucket of wheat paste and a roll of posters on the Christie Pits Riot. The idea of putting up posters had come to him as soon as he had learned the story of this riot. Before long, ideas for other posters sprang to mind. Slowly new posters were made.

One of the ideas behind putting up the posters is that they can be up right on the street in the areas where people live. Instead of having to go out of your way to learn about the history it can be stumbled on by anyone in the neighbourhood that the history took place.

One dilemma of using posters is that people have to stand in order to read them. They can not take it with them to sit down somewhere comfortable. This would suggest that the posters need to be as short and as easy to read as possible. However, we have been resistant to this, because so many historic plaques mark only that an event happened, but not why it is relevant. The content of our posters is a constant struggle between these two extremes.

In 2006, it was decided to move the project in more ambitious directions. Not only is the number of posters being expanded, but plans are underway to incorporate a variety of other mediums, to seek funding, and to find collaborators to work on various projects.

The Missing Plaque Project Blog

List of posters that may be released in the future

Guided Tours

The poster's potential / Tim Groves



Via Just Seeds

Critical Geographies

Critical Geographies: A Collection of Readings
Edited by Harald Bauder and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro



Radical Theory/Critical Praxis: Making a Difference Beyond the Academy?
Edited by Duncan Fuller and Rob Kitchin

Misc. Resources:

Praxis (e)Press

ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies / Contents

Antipode Classic Articles (Free PDFs)

Antipode Themed Articles (Free PDFs)

Activist Geographers Grouping