Francesco Biagi (Junior researcher Project)
STARTING AND CONCLUSIONS DATES . April 2021 - April 2027 . FINANCING . FCT-FAUL.
KEY WORDS . Henri Lefebvre; Right to the City; Neoliberal City; Urban Marginality; Production of Space.
RELEVANCE . The proposed research critically engages with Henri Lefebvre's pioneering work on the crisis of the city and its contemporary relevance in the context of struggles faced by urban and peri-urban areas under neoliberalism, above all in Portugal and in South Europe. Specifically, it delves into Lefebvre's sociological insights concerning the concepts of the
“right to the city” and "production of space", and their applicability in current critical analyses of urban spaces within the neoliberal framework. In 2018, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of "The Right to the City" (1968), and in 2024, we will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of "The Production of Space" (1974). This project's central objective is to engage in a theoretical discussion regarding the use and significance, half a century later, of Lefebvre's theoretical concepts. In the last years, these notions have been increasingly appropriated by urban social movements and within different discourses on the transformation of urban reality (with more or less emancipatory significance) in academia, local and national government bodies, and international agencies. In these multiple and diversified actions and reactions, in different and contradictory discourses, many new futures are now being configured.