by David Harvey, The White Review
From time immemorial there have been human beings who have
believed that they could construct, individually or collectively, a better
world for themselves than that which they had inherited. Quite a lot of them
also came to believe that in the course of so doing it might be possible to
remake themselves as different if not better people. I count myself among those
who believe in both these propositions. In Rebel Cities, for example, I argued
that ‘the question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the
question of what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations
we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of life we desire,
what aesthetic values we hold’. The right to the city, I wrote, is ‘far more
than a right of individual or group access to the resources that the city
embodies: it is a right to change and re-invent the city more after our heart’s
desire … The freedom to make and remake ourselves and our cities is … one of
the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.’[1] Perhaps for this
intuitive reason, the city has been the focus throughout its history of an
immense outpouring of utopian desires for happier futures and less alienating
times.
