Lefebvre does not see the right to the city as an incremental addition to existing liberal-democratic rights. He sees it as an essential element of a wider political struggle for revolution. (pg. 2)
I think this is a very meaningful quote because Purcell gives a general explanation of Lefebvre’s definition of “rights to the city” and this acts as a guide for the remainder of the article as he writes about how all of these different places incorporate their similar versions of “the rights to the city” and how the don’t define it the same way.
These initiatives are diverse, of course, but in the main idea they share this human rights imagination of the right to the city, in which it is a right that that ultimately reaches its fullest form when it is codified and guaranteed by the liberal-democratic state. (pg. 4)
This quote really goes well with the above quote because it really explains how all of the places he writes about view “the rights to the city” versus the way Lefebvre views it. It really demonstrates how “the rights to the city” are limited and unable to reach the full potential Lefebvre sees.
He hoped that an analysis of space, and specifically of the “lived spaces” that people actually experience, would be able to apprehend human life as a complex whole and avoid reducing our understanding of experience to small fractions of life, such as class status, gender, race, income, consumer habits, marital status, and so on. Similarly, Lefebvre sought to open up an understanding of the city as a complex whole, as a teeming multitude of different desires and drives that are not reducible to economic imperatives (1970; 1972).
I think this is one of the most important quotes of the article because it really describes Lefebvre and demonstrates the kind of person he was. It also really helps to explain his thinking and why he believes “the rights to the city” go so far beyond just being codified or recognized by the state. This also explains why he wants a revolution because he views people as more than just their race or economic standing. This really shows how far ahead of his time Lefebvre is because of his belief that class and such do not define people, that they are more than just class and race and other small things.
