engleski

Right to the City: Original Concept, Development and Croatian Examples

Henri Lefebvre in 1968 coined slogan "right to the city" under which he exposed the idea of a radical change in the economic, social and political life of the city with the aim of “a transformed and renewed access to urban life”. The paper will show his basic idea and the development of the movements that grew out of it. Right to the city movements today mostly represent reformative social movements that seek to change the system from the inside (which is opposed to the original radical Lefebvre’s approach) in order to achieve greater participation of citizens in decision-making and to gain better housing conditions. In the last few years in Croatia some initiatives with these aims were organized. They represent the right to the city movement as a way of resistance to different neoliberal capitalism interventions in urban space. Finally we present two examples of these civil initiatives in Croatia. First is "The Right to the City", which borrowed its name from Lefebvre. It tried to prevent the construction of shopping centre and luxury apartments in the center of Zagreb, on Flower Square (Cvjetni trg). Second is Dubrovnik’s initiative "Srđ is our" which is recently active in its efforts to prevent megalomaniac plan of building touristic complex on the hill Srđ above the old town. The paper will compare these movements with the original Lefebvre’s idea and try to answer the question could these movements be successful in their efforts.

right to the city; Lefebvre; civic initiatives; Zagreb; Dubrovnik

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