The ecumenical ‘right to the city’: Urban commons and intersectional enclosures in athens and Istanbul

Abstract

In recent years, discussions about urban commons and new enclosures have revolved mainly around the Marxist notion of ‘accumulation by dispossession’, and conceptualisations of the commons as a new version of the ‘right to the city’. Yet, during prominent recent urban revolts, protestors not only claimed urban space from sovereign power but also tried to invent common spaces which go beyond cultural, class, gender, religious and political identities. Such mobilisations demonstrate the ecumenical character of the right to the city, which affects both local and global scales. In parallel, neoliberal urban policies tend to appropriate common space through creativity, and urban-marketing policies with the aim of improving the competitiveness of cities. Consequently, the discourse about the right to the city and common space should be reconsidered, as it is becoming an ecumenical and hybrid arena of urban conflict. Therefore, this chapter considers common space in a Lefebvrian trialectic conceptualisation of perceived–conceived–lived space, deploying a framework based on intersectional approaches. In doing so, the chapter examines emerging common space and intersectional spatialities of race, sex, class and culture in Athens and Istanbul. In the current era of global crisis, there is a tension in both cities between neoliberal city and rebel city. They represent exemplary places for neoliberal urban policies and, simultaneously, constitute the epicentre of riots and rebels, such as the Indignados of 2011 in Athens and the 2013 Gezi Park uprising in Istanbul, which push the boundaries of social meanings of the right to the city and common space.