| dc.description.abstract | Lefebvre’s concept of Right to the City has been predominantly employed by critical theorists to analyze resistant spatial practices such as Occupy Wall Street (e.g. Marcuse 2009). However, influenced by Nietzsche, Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space as simultaneously perceived, conceived and lived suggests that the political may emerge out of novel spatial and bodily experiences. Focusing on Lefebvre’s interest in the body, affect and space, I construct a vital reading of the right to the city to explore how such spatial practices may not be explicitly resistant to capitalism yet engender postcapitalist possibilities. Using this theoretical framework, I analyze Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Urbanism as a vital form of Lefebvre’s right to the city. I argue that because DIY Urbanism focuses on things that matter to people – streets, buildings, lots, etc. – these projects assemble individuals who represent diverse identities, interests and class positionings. Although this assemblage of people, things and capital can certainly catalyze gentrification, these open-ended and open-sourced projects also allow individuals to actively produce and experience urban space as a shared, collective project that can accommodate a wide range of uses and inhabitants.
To explore this potential, this dissertation focused on the Six Points neighborhood in Fort Worth, Texas. Through archival research, extensive fieldwork and interviews with DIY Urbanists, artists, residents, city officials and developers, I tracked how these projects enabled feelings of generosity, radical belonging, collective ownership and jouissance through the creation and pleasurable experience of a community garden, participatory art projects and other pop-up spatial interventions. By collectively producing and experiencing space as Riverside Arts District, the DIY Urbanism projects created the conditions of possibility for postcapitalist publics. However, the assemblage was fragile and began to fragment after becoming increasingly entangled with neoliberal city and development interests. The dissertation closes with a discussion as to how planners can help build capacity for these nascent postcapitalist possibilities through a renewed commitment to co-producing the continually elusive, just city. | |
