Cities for people, not for profit: critical urban theory and the right to the city

摘要

The core concern around which these essays collect is the relation of radical thought and practice to contemporary urban space and society. Two premises provide the motivation for the collection. The first is the contemporary global financial crisis; the 'hypercommodifcation of urban life' that characterizes the context of the crisis and the responses to it that signal the strength and depth of oppositional feeling. The second concerns the (in)adequacy of much current, urban-oriented research and the potential for critical urban theory to be both more rigorous in its determination to expose the economic basis of exploitation and inequality, and more significant as a mode of thought and investigation that can instigate change.