نشریه هفت شهر
پیاپی 49-50 (بهار و تابستان 1394)

At the outset it is important to note that the title of Henri Lefebvre’s book Le droit a la ville (the Right to the City) which is the theme of the present issue of Haft Shahr Quarterly on Urban Studies and Planning refers to a right and to a city which both are non-existent. For Lefebvre, at the same time, lack of the right to the city, is an entry point and perfectly legitimate reason for emphasizing the need for an urban revolution which will emancipate both society and man and paves the way for an environment in which all one dimensional or alienated human beings will be able “to cut the rope and be free”. Only then every woman and every man will be able to realize the full and hidden potentials which are neglected and very often repressed .Emancipated city dwellers based on their real and self chosen needs, will build their own cities and by doing so, they also fulfill their constructive potentials reflected in creative activities: play, art, sport, in short oeuvre, which are indicators of a very different humanism embedded in Lefebvre’s approach. Lefebvre rightly has singled out capitalism and it’s inner-logic or constant accumulation of capital ,a never ending process based on exchange value, as the main cause of all ills which humanshas been experiencing since capitalism has come to life. The present paper based upon the above argument has reviewed the emergence of modern capitalism and its changes from mercantile to industrial, then to monopoly capitalism and finally to the present stage, namely casino capitalism which requires globalization from the above or economic globalization leading to a single and truly global market based on neo-liberalism as its own ideology. By gradual changes of capitalism no matter how short lived, exchange value has gained supremacy as the most important tool for capital accumulation. When capitalism’s transformation from one stage to the next is carefully scrutinized, it reveals that the main goal is sustained expansion leading to ever more accumulation. In fact constant strive to accumulate which is capitalism’s inner-logic is also responsible for making capitalism a crisis prone system. Realization of the fact that accumulation is only possible by ever increasing consumption leading to a consumer society, the emergence of a new type of slavery unprecedented in human history, becomes inevitable. Lefebvre in his long and productive life, writing over seventy books and hundreds of articles, not only has reformulated Marx’s view especially as far as city, urban life and society are concerned, has criticized historicism, convincingly has added space as a crucial and for long neglected dimension to any socio- economic and cultural analysis of present life and finally has argued that planning from the above as an ideology serves the interest of the status quo. Consequently, planning in general and urban planning in particular become destructive as far as city and environment are concerned. The same applies to philosophy and even participation. The present article after a detailed review of Henri Lefebvre’s life, active participation in social movements, France’s May of 1967 student and workers movement in particular, has concentrated on a number of important questions which when viewed together, a well thought out approach will become visible. His three major works namely the Right to the City, Production of Space and the State are devoted to those questions. The Right to the City which is reviewed in this article, clearly points to the fact that under capitalism human rights, citizenship and its six types, access to various needs, participation included and being different, at best remain incomplete, reformist in nature which again justifies the need for an urban revolution. By victory of urban revolution, exchange value and for that matter constant accumulation of capital become obsolete. Only then a real just society will emerge and the right to the city will become a reality. The article then has reviewed the most important issues related to the right to the city. Those issues include the conflict between use value and exchange value, industrialization and urbanization, reformulation of the concept dialectics, a new meaning of inhabit, the problems related to fragmentation of sciences, continuities, discontinuities and urban formations, socialization of society both under capitalism and its relation to consumerism and eight types of form. The article has come to an end by translating the twelve theses on the city, the urban and planning into Persian which are in a sense concluding remarks related to the right to the city.

In this paper, an effort was made to fully explain the concept “the right to the city”, which is increasingly taking on importance and drawing attention in academic circles and urban policy makings in the world in the first place. The concept was first introduced by a French sociologist, Henri Lefebvre, in 1958. However, discussion and interpretations revolving around it lasted up to recent years. While some experts following Lefebvre explained his work, e.g. Mark Pourcel, or put effort into determining practitioners applying, namely David Harovey, some had objections to different aspects of his work, its latent democracy for instance, demanding modern adaptations to this concept and efforts to make them enforceable. Transition of Lefebvre’s idea from “theory” to “action” was considered to be a lengthy and live project which is today pursued by different organizations and networks in the world, but it faces certain difficulties and problems of its kind. Examples of these measures have been here introduced. As a matter of fact, the question is how we can implement a critical and fundamental concept such as “the right to the city” aiming for subverting covert and overt relations of capitalism in cities and bringing about new design in the current capitalist-driven societies in the form of kind of liberal-democratic citizenship? The question provides academics, intellectuals, civil activists, and urban managers and experts with a new critical standpoint through which one can decode some problems of metropolises including Tehran which is in the grip of a defective capitalist and statecracy.

The concept “the right to the city” has been widely used these days in such a way that its meaning has become apparent to everyone. However, what has been less dealt with is its nature and origin and more importantly its link to radical democracy. Public acceptance, both at global level and in Iran, of this concept in parallel with the lack of a critical survey on it involves the risk that its central issue may be subject to distortion. As a result, thorough study of the concept seems necessary. For this reason, in this essay, by reviewing Henri Lefebvre’s ideas, the source of the idea of the right to the city, we aim to provide a general picture of concepts by which the concept of the right to the city can just find its full meaning. Therefore, we attempt to lower the possibility of reductionism in dealing with the concept “the right to the city”, and provide a roughly accurate image of it. To this end, we address the dialectic from the viewpoint of Lefebvre and its link to concepts such as praxis and perfect human. Because it seems the dialectic method is peculiar to Lefebvre, the chain linking his ideas. In what follows, we address the concept of alienation; the concept that plays a determining role in Lefebvre’s ideas as he found it a daily experience of which the criticism involves the criticism of daily life, criticism of alienation like daily experience bestows a fundamental role on daily life. According to this, revolution and social change should not be sought simply at state or economic level any longer. Thus, revolution turns into a revolution in daily life. Afterward, we arrive at the most central concept in explaining the right to the city; production of space; what makes Lefebvre develop the right to the city into right to space. Having provided a general picture of Lefebvre’s thinking set, we direct our focus toward the concept of the right to the city more thoroughly so that we look at it with a more profound view.

Today in the literature of urbanity, the theory of the right to the city and how it can be achieved and applied in cities have received a lot of attention as one of the necessities of urban life and citizenship rights. Over the past decade, the right to the city has become one of the controversial and questionable concepts in urban studies. In different urban societies at national and global levels, the right to the city has been frequently referred and upheld in the form of rules and various charters as one of the living necessities and citizenship rights in a modern city. Given that up to now, despite numerous investigations in regard to the concept of civil rights, the concept of the right to the city and its place in the society as a ‘right” and living necessity in a city have received little attention and foundations for achieving it are not provided, we in this article introduce and analyze the theory of the right to the city and how to achieve it in the process of producing and reproducing space in city using a descriptive-analytical method, and eventually touch on charters and rules passed as to the right to the city at global levels based on some countries in order to get acquainted with and benefit from global experiences.

Cities and spaces governing them are developed more than anything by political economy of their time and place. For this reason, cities that grow under the influence of capitalism ideas are far different from those in socialist system. The search for justice in city is a search for something beyond person’s reaction and opinion on special inequalities. Although spatial concepts concerning social justice are common concerns of a number of active organizations and urban social movements throughout the world, the meaning of justice has not been properly defined yet. The notion of justice in urban theory is the beginning of a theoretical framework that effectively direct discussions and measures taken in the process of changing the shape of existing city realities. The article attempts to track the notion of justice in theories and explore the underlying assumption about the theories.

The right to the city is in no conflict with other civil rights in its true sense, but there are some constraints and weaknesses in the definition of the nature and explanation of this right on the one hand, and its interaction with other rights, which has some consequences for urban development plans and programs on public scale and in the context of urban regeneration measures on particular scale. For the most important conflicts between the goals of the right to the city and process of “urban regeneration measures, we can refer to neglect to “private property rights”. Right to private space is the right that gives meaning to the living of residents in city, but the right to the city may not only be achieved, but injustice also manifests itself more in urban spaces when measures for urban regeneration forbids residents from the right to space with an aim to realize the right to the city, let the property right of the residents remain at the periphery. The research aims to enrich the concept and position of “the right to the city” by probing into Imam Ali Highway Project from two aspects, property right and the right to the city, and parallel with it, it aims to define “property right on the hand, and balance the existing conflict between property right and the right to the city; thus, the research has a qualitative nature and approach and mainly rests on a critical analysis, in that using logical argumentation it analyzes and investigates the position of the two concepts “the right to the city” and “property rights” in the process of urban regeneration measures, both in terms of a case study (Imam Ali Highway in Atabak and Minaee neighborhoods) and documentary studies.

In the Islamic thought, justice has been accounted for beyond equality as it has never believed that everyone should have an equal share, but everyone according to his/her ability, effort, and destiny can gain sustenance. Measures taken at governmental level of an Islamic state should always comply with fairness. It can suggest moderation and restraint, but it is actually considered an action of justice. This means that in all circumstances with any means it is possible that an action of justice is performed differently. Therefore, urban and state managers are required to enjoy high understanding abilities for appropriate and timely decision making. Judicial fairness in the distribution of urban functions are considered the most important issues currently raised concerning sustainability of developing societies. In this paper, it was attempted to explain the position of justice in the Islamic urbanity and philosophy relating to it, as well as providing a clear definition of the concept of justice in the Islamic thought and urbanity. For some thinkers, justice has no clear definition, and city developers have yet to provide a full and comprehensive assessment of spatial justice, because full spatial justice has not shown to be realized easily. However, justice itself involves conditions and considerations on spatial scale, which are mentioned in this paper. In the end, the topic the right to the city is studies and Islamic viewpoints on it are explained so that its different dimensions can be adapted to the conditions of Iranian-Islamic cities and their citizens by means of an analytic-descriptive method.

Today new form of urban management structures has no choice a head but the acceptance of social structures and participation of civil society. For this reason, we can refer to the dialogue between citizenship participation and “the right to the city” as the most obvious discourse of the present century, and undoubtedly the discourse of “the right to the city” is more than anything indebted to efforts and activities of two contemporary thinkers in social and urban fields, Henry Lefebrve and David Harovey. Given the translation and recent acceptance of these two works, the boom in the discourse of “the right to the city” in Iran’s professional urban field, the question is raised how we can examine and compare the ratios of themes and structures of the production of the concepts with Iran’s cities and urban society. According to this, we may be able to refer to the review of the fundamental concepts of “the right to the city” topic and the revision of Iran’s social circumstances as one way of achieving the goal of matching “the right to the city” theories, and the first step to actually bring it into action, on course to achieve a dynamic, participatory and creative society for a sustainable city. Thus, the structure of the essay was developed based on first an exploration and observation of the concept of the right to the city within the history of Iran’s territory and its comparison with its reproduction origins in the foregoing thinkers’ ideas, second comparison of the different structures of the formation of city concept in the two areas in question, and third revision of the representations of concepts such as civil society, culture and everyday life as the foundation of credit and demand of “the right to the city”, so that a time-place entry can be created to extend the discourse coming from a foundation with a mostly European- Paris-based-Marxist nature.

Undoubtedly with participatory planning and interest in multifaceted factors preventing inclusiveness of city particularly in public spaces, sense of belonging and responsibility of citizenship are realized. From the last two decades of the twentieth century onward, large cities have witnessed a growing cultural and identity diversity encouraged by a revision in the inflexible structure of urban planning; however, wherever there is discrimination and poverty, possibility of access is reduced and even rejected in some cases. Every time diversity becomes apparent with a look different from what was assumed to be normal (as in skin color, clothing, etc.), narrow-minded behaviors smooth the way for the prevalence of abnormalities. The study examines Muslim women’s experiences, in their own language, in living their daily life in public spaces and challenges they face. The significance of studying the experiences lies in the chasm between the Muslim (the growing Muslim population, Katani, 2010) and Western societies where they live. When a Muslim citizen challenges the look of everyday life, it becomes apparent and marginalize and estrange a minority group.

The right to the city is a concept which is raised in response to an objective perspective on city and state alliance and capital in urban life. It is a view that exist in the management of Iran’s cities, and city and its resources are used as a means of profit making accordingly. Citizens engage in civil interaction in order to restore their the right to the city by criticizing the current situation. In Ekbatan Town in the capital of Iran, some measures have been recently taken that we can consider a civil interaction in urban field. In this research, benefitting from participatory observation method by becoming involved in the interactions, an attempt was made to account for it with regard to characteristics necessary for civil interaction.

Today quite a serious and important discourse on “informal habitation” has been raised in the contemporary literature of world urbanity. The concept has offered new perspectives in regard to the analysis and recognition of spaces and confronting urban challenges, which has sadly remained unnoticed in Iran in regard to scientific and professional fields particularly in urbanology and urbanity and traditional perspectives with focus on pathology rather than phenomenology are employed concerning informal affairs. A close relationship between the right to the city and informal habitation is a good opportunity for introducing the discussion in the field of urban space analysis particularly from urban design perspective as knowledge dealing with quality of public area. The concise essay was written with the aim of opening an avenue and introducing the concepts, claiming that each of the perspectives require a stricter design and investigation of its applications to Iran’s urban space area. The essay has two parts; the first part introduces the important concept informal habitation and briefly addresses the right to the city, and the second part addresses the application of the two concepts to the analysis and recognition of the formation and activities of urban spaces.