THE RIGHT TO THE CITY AND THE STRUGGLES OVER PUBLIC CITIZENSHIP:
EXPLORING THE LINKS
Anna Plyushteva
The right to the city: the entitled and the excluded - The Urban Reinventors, Special issue, November 2009
The Right to the City has recently re-gained prominence in academic and political-activist debates on urban matters. However, its analytical utility, and its relevance and scope as a political project continue to be seen as vague, if not questionable. This paper discusses some key contributions made to the conceptualisation of the Right to the City, and attempts to reconcile them with some examples of how the Right to the City is practiced in different locations globally. Its goal is to open the door to a more precise and policy-relevant definition of the Right to the City, which may contribute meaningfully to both the academic debate and the lived experience of urban citizenship [...]
Anna Plyushteva holds an MSc in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her thesis project was based on fieldwork in Lima, Peru, and focused on collective action and notions of citizenship in disadvantaged urban areas. Her academic interests revolve around almost every aspect of urban life, especially the meanings and uses of public space, impacts of globalization in cities, phenomena of social exclusion, and participatory democracy in an urban context. She is currently working on applying key contemporary thinking on the urban to the specific context of Eastern European cities.
Email: plyushteva @ gmail.com
