RIGHT TO THE CITY vs BRIDGING THE URBAN DIVIDE
Two Separate Approaches?
By Tom Angotti
The right to the city: the entitled and the excluded - The Urban Reinventors, Special issue, November 2009
There are many urban divides in the world, not one “urban divide.” There is the divide between the hundreds of globalized metropolitan regions and the hundreds of thousands smaller cities, towns and villages. There are the divides between independent and dependent cities, rich and poor, secure and insecure, urban and rural, public and private, etc. And within the globalized metros new forms of exclusion and division are taking hold: gated communities, malls, technopoles, and office parks, connected to one another by a public infrastructure overtaken by private vehicles and public transit. This new paradigm for the division of urban land is growing with the expansion of global financial capital and its companion, globalized real estate. It is fostering the division of land for profit instead of meeting human needs [...]
Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of New York, and Director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning and Development. His book, New York For Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, was published by MIT Press in 2008. He is Land Use columnist for www.gothamgazette.com, co-editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and an editor for the journal Local Environment. He recently served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Bangalore (India), Hanoi (Vietnam) and Catania (Sicily).
