Thinking the urban: on recent writings on philosophy and the city

摘要

Although one would scarcely know it from most existing commentaries, in his celebrated 1968 text the Right to the City, Henri Lefeb-vre is remarkably clear that, in order to 'take up a radically critical analysis and to deepen the urban problematic', it is not the more or less specialized domains of economic, political or social science that must be 'the starting point', but their more venerable forebear, philosophy. It is philosophers, writes Lefeb-vre, who 'have thought the city', who 'have bought to language and concept urban life' (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 86).