The geographer David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York (CUNY) has published a new book.

The geographer David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York (CUNY) and one of the world’s leading scholars in urban geography, has published a new book, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (Versos, 2012).

In this essay, Harvey reviews the concept of the right to the city, which was formulated by the French sociologist Henri Lefebvre who understands that the right to the city is conditioned by urban planning, the uses to which public spaces are put, and urban regeneration as a method of social control through city design.

Taking as his reference the protest movements of recent months, for example the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street or the Indignados in Spain, David Harvey points out that the city has always been at the heart of sweeping political and social change. From his standpoint as a Marxist geographer, he sees the city as the centre of capital accumulation and hence as the setting in which class struggle is visible.

Surveying great metropolises like Johannesburg and Sao Paulo, Harvey asks how cities might be organised in a more just and ecologically sane and healthy way with a view to providing answers to present-day social conflicts.

On 10 May, David Harvey will be giving a public lecture titled “Rebel Cities: The Urbanization of Class Struggle” at London School of Economics and Political Science.

http://www.versobooks.com/books/1116-rebel-cities