The death and life of the urban commonwealth
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The death and life of the urban commonwealth
Oxford University Press, c2016
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-255) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The city is a paradoxical space, in theory belonging to everyone, in practice inaccessible to people who cannot afford the high price of urban real estate. Within these urban spaces are public and social goods including roads, policing, transit, public education, and culture, all of which have been created through multiple hands and generations, but that are effectively only for the use of those able to acquire private property. Why should this be the case?
As Margaret Kohn argues, when people lose access to the urban commons, they are dispossessed of something to which they have a rightful claim - the right to the city. Political theory has much to say about individual rights, equality, and redistribution, but it has largely ignored the city. In response, Kohn turns to a mostly forgotten political theory called solidarism to interpret the city as a form of common-wealth. In this view, the city is a concentration of value created by past
generations and current residents: streets, squares, community centers, schools and local churches. Although the legal title to these mixed spaces includes a patchwork of corporate, private, and public ownership, if we think of the spaces as the common-wealth of many actors, the creation of a new framework of
value becomes possible. Through its novel mix of political and urban theory, The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth proposes a productive way to rethink struggles over gentrification, public housing, transit, and public space.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Solidarism and Social Property
Chapter Three: The Return of the Pavement Dwellers
Chapter Four: Public Housing and the Right to Occupancy
Chapter Five: What is Wrong with Gentrification?
Chapter Six: Freedom Riders
Chapter Seven: Occupying the Commons: The Populist and the Sovereigntist Public
Chapter Eight: Parks and Refs: Democracy, Disobedience and Public Space
Chapter Nine: Hetero-rights to the City
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
