ISSN:
0309-1317
Language:
English
Titel der Quelle:
International journal of urban and regional research : IJURR
Publ. der Quelle:
Oxford [u.a.] : Wiley
Angaben zur Quelle:
Vol. 39, No. 1 (2015), p. 28-45
DDC:
690
Abstract:
What roles can utopia play in contemporary critical urban studies? The concept has often been treated warily, sidelined or dismissed. Recent years, however, have seen a revival of interest, as writers, activists and artists have sought openings to urban worlds that are different and better. By returning to aspects of the urban thought and practice of H enri L efebvre in the 1960s and early 1970s, this article challenges common understandings of utopia and clarifies some of its potential uses for critical urban studies today. It explores L efebvre's emphasis on the possible, and in particular the importance he attached to extending and realizing the possible through struggling for what seems impossible. Rather than being a free‐floating or endlessly open project, however, this engagement with the ‘possible‐impossible' emerged in critical dialogue with other currents of utopian urbanism, including prospective thought then influential in F rance. It was also rooted in long‐ standing concerns with the critique of everyday life and with experimentation through projects with urbanists, architects and others. By attending to these often neglected aspects of L efebvre's utopianism, a series of provocations emerge for addressing the urban question in ways that take seriously not only what urbanization processes and urban life are but also what they could become and how they might be constituted differently.
Note:
Copyright: © 2013 Urban Research Publications Limited
,
Copyright: © COPYRIGHT 2015 Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
DOI:
10.1111/1468-2427.12083
URL:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12083/abstract
URL:
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1660614288
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