Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City

摘要

The title of the book precisely describes the book's content. The book investigates the influence of capitalism on urban life, city development and social organisation under the present, very common neoliberal economic system. It introduces a great number of contributors addressing aspects of current cities using an economic analysis. The book has assembled a group of contributors with the aim of exploring a process called 'commodification of the urban space'. Indeed, the investigations in this book are often presented as emanating from the work of known experts such as Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey and Jane Jacobs. Therefore, the essence of the book is to present a critical review of the current economic model and its implications for urban life. Peter Marcuse states that the system "relies on greed to produce growth at the expense of all other values, and that stifles creativity that does not serve profit" (p. 27), and this becomes a common idea throughout the book. Although the contributors including Marcuse, Brenner, Schmid, Goonewardena and Mayer, have intensively used and referred to some well-known studies, especially the 1968 "Right to the City" of Henri Lefebvre, the book also sets out different approaches and considers different aspects. The span of topics ranges from historical processes of commodification, a critical analysis of the current urban knowledge status quo, to social urban inequality, and segregation.