Cities within the city: do-it-yourself urbanism and the right to the city

PCP and The Public Space Working Group hosts Kurt Iveson who will speak on a recently completed paper entitled

Cities within the city: do-it-yourself urbanism and the right to the city

[Artwork by Chris Stain]

Friday, March 2nd, 12-2pm
Room 5487

CUNY Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, NY NY 10016

This event is free and open to the public

bring a photo ID for building admission

“Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a range of micro-spatial urban practices in many cities around the world that are frequently described as ‘do-it-yourself’ urbanism. These practices include actions such as: guerrilla and community gardening; housing and retail co-operatives; flash mobbing and other shock tactics; social economies and bartering schemes; ’empty spaces’ movements to occupy abandoned buildings for a range of purposes; subcultural practices like graffiti/street art, skateboarding and parkour; and more. This paper asks: to what extent do such practices constitute a new form of urban politics that might give birth to a more just and democratic city? In answering this question, the paper will consider these do-it-yourself urbanisms from the perspective of the ‘right to the city’. Drawing on that concept, I’ll argues that if do-it-yourself urbanist practices which appropriate urban spaces are to generate a wider politics of the city, they need to assert new forms of authority in the city based on the equality of urban inhabitants. This claim will be made through reflections on a couple of case studies, including one of Sydney-based activist art collective BUGA UP.”


Kurt Iveson is Senior Lecturer in Urban Geography at the University of Sydney. He is author of Publics and the City (Blackwell 2007), co-author of Planning and Diversity in the City: Redistribution, Recognition and Encounter (Palgrave 2008), and a Deputy Editor of the journal City, in which he recently edited a Special Issue on Graffiti and Street Art. He’s also actively involved in the Sydney Alliance as a member of the National Tertiary Education Union.

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