The Right to the City: free e-book from Verso

We’re pleased to say that Mark Graham and I have had our recent paper on digital information and Henri Lefebvre’s right to the city published in a free collection by the publisher Verso. This has just been released to mark the 50th anniversary of Lefebvre’s original “Le Droite a la Ville” (1968). The collection is available for download as an e-book and includes reflections on Lefebvre’s work from a variety of perspectives, all considering its contemporary significance in a present marked by a renewed privatization of public space, and the ongoing struggles for urban housing, justice and equality. From the other contributing authors this includes discussion of squatting, security and sexuality; and in our closing piece we consider the power of corporate actors like Google in future battles for the right to the city, amidst an increasingly technocratic and data-centric vision of the urban condition.

You can read our original paper here in the geography journal Antipode, or download the e-book from Verso’s website.