Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution
Long before the Occupy movement, modern cities had already become the central sites of revolutionary politics, where the deeper currents of social and political change rise to the surface. Consequently, cities have been the subject of much utopian thinking. But at the same time they are also the centers of capital accumulation and the frontline for struggles over who controls access to urban resources and who dictates the quality and organization of daily life. Is it the financiers and developers, or the people?
Rebel Cities places the city at the heart of both capital and class struggles, looking at locations ranging from Johannesburg to Mumbai, and from New York City to São Paulo. Drawing on the Paris Commune as well as Occupy Wall Street and the London Riots, Harvey asks how cities might be reorganized in more socially just and ecologically sane ways—and how they can become the focus for anti-capitalist resistance.
Hardback, 206 pages
ISBN: 9781844678822
April 2012
$16.95 / £9.99 / $18.50CAN
Reviews
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Whose streets? Our streets! In Rebel Cities David Harvey shows us how we might turn this slogan into a reality. That task—and this book—could hardly be more important.
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David Harvey provoked a revolution in his field and has inspired a generation of radical intellectuals.
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Intellectuals in the Occupy movement [will] appreciate Rebel Cities' descriptions of the historic and international parallel of urban struggles to reclaim public space and build culture, and be intrigued by Harvey’s musings on how to grow a lively, resilient revolutionary anticapitalist movement.
Blog
VIDEO: David Harvey and David Graeber at CUNY April 25th
At last, video of Verso's April 25th, 2012 talk between David Harvey and David Graeber at CUNY Graduate Center's Center for Place, Culture and Politics. Harvey's Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution was published just this spring and Graeber's exhaustive Debt: The First 5,000 Years continues to garner much-deserved praise. Respectively two of the foremost theorists of Marxist geography and the Occupy movement, Harvey and Graeber's conversation touched on Murray Bookchin, El Alto's 2003 and 2005 uprisings, the explosion of Chile's student movement just last year, the commons, inclusive versus exclusive hierarchies, the hidden history of US "democracy," alternatives to capitalism and, of course, Occupy Wall Street.
Every minute of their conversation is stimulating, rigorous—and inspiring. Many thanks to CUNY Graduate Center, Melville House and all those who turned out to the discussion.
CONTEST: Win tickets to Wednesday's Sold Out Discussion between David Harvey and David Graeber
Did you miss the opportunity to register to attend "Rebel Cities: Occupation, the Commons and Urban Democracy," David Harvey and David Graeber's talk at CUNY Grad Center this Wednesday?
Never fear, now's your chance to win tickets to the sold out event. We're giving away front-row seats to two lucky Harvey fans, who write to us with the following:
Write to us in the comments section of this blog post with your favorite David Harvey quote. No more than four lines, please, and with title of book, page number and copyright date. If your quote is from an article, please include name of publication, page number and copyright date.
We'll choose two people at random to win. To be considered, your quote must appear in the comments section of this blog post. Winners will be announced Wednesday, April 25th at 12pm.
Good luck!
Verso's guide to political walking
Inspired by Patrick Keiller's The Robinson Institute, currently on show at the Tate Britain, we present Verso's guide to political walking. We also draw influence from Will Self's Guardian article in which he pronounces that "walking is political" and suggests that the "contemporary flâneur" can be one "who seeks equality of access, freedom of movement and the dissolution of corporate and state control."
1. Wanderlust - Rebecca Solnit
The first general history of walking, Rebecca Solnit's book finds a profound relationship between walking and thinking, walking and culture, and argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in an ever more automobile-dependent and accelerated world.
2. Savage Messiah - Laura Oldfield Ford
Savage Messiah collects Laura Oldfield Ford's black and white, cut 'n' paste, punk fanzines that document her drift through London's margins. Illustrated with haunting line drawings of forgotten people and places, Oldfield Ford records the beauty and anger at the city's edges.
Upcoming Events
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May 24, 2012
Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse
The Ric Pfeffer Lecture: David Harvey
David Harvey delivers a commemorative lecture on anticapitalist geography -
June 06, 2012
The Kitchen
Tracing Creative Destruction with David Harvey and Matthew Buckingham
A conversation between the author of Rebel Cities and Matthew Buckingham
Discussions
Begin a discussionOther books by David Harvey
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The Enigma of Capital
by David Harvey
Published in 2010 by Oxford University Press in the US and by Profile in the UK.
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A Companion to Marx's Capital
by David Harvey
The radical geographer guides us through the classic text of political economy.
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The Limits to Capital
by David Harvey
A major rereading of Marx’s critique of political economy, newly updated.
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Spaces of Global Capitalism
by David Harvey
An essential introduction to the field of historical geography.