The movement of city-making: reflections about an urban utopia

Abstract

The article analyzes, at first, the implications around the concept of the right to the city, as originally proposed by Henri Lefebvre (1968), as an experimental utopia, that is, a claim that produces resistance in the face of the forces that are established in the capitalist production of cities. Then there is a problematization around the contradictions of the concept, which has been both a common denominator of social struggles and also coopted by agents linked to the neoliberal management of urban spaces. Despite the multifaceted character of the right to the city, the article draws attention to urban perspectives that allow us to fill a supposedly empty signifier that permeates the concept. In this way, we dialogue with Michel Agier (2015), an author who points out the importance of considering the “making-city”, that is, the movements that are incited by the impacts caused by the management of the city as a product and that, therefore, are driven by an appeal: that of the city as a lost myth, an unattainable horizon. The article ends with ethnographic descriptions of the movements of the “making-city” in order to reveal how certain urban practices and experiences – notably, the practice of street skateboarding – became an urban utopia in the face of the management and governance that are carried out public and private spaces of São Paulo, the city where the investigations were carried out.