Urban Revolution Now Henri Lefebvre in Social Research and Architecture

When Henri Lefebvre published The Urban Revolution in 1970, he sketched a research itinerary on the emerging tendency towards planetary urbanization. Today, when this tendency has become reality, Lefebvre’s ideas on everyday life, production of space, rhythmanalysis and the right to the city are indispensable for the understanding of urbanization processes at every scale of social practice. This volume is the first to develop Lefebvre’s concepts in social research and architecture by focusing on urban conjunctures in Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dhaka, Hong Kong, London, New Orleans, Nowa Huta, Paris, Toronto, São Paulo, Sarajevo, as well as in Mexico and Switzerland. With contributions by historians and theorists of architecture and urbanism, geographers, sociologists, political and cultural scientists, Urban Revolution Now reveals the multiplicity of processes of urbanization and the variety of their patterns and actors around the globe.

Contents: Introduction: theory, not method - thinking with Lefebvre, Christian Schmid, Å ukasz Stanek and à kos Moravánszky. Part I On Complete Urbanization: The trouble with Henri: urban research and the theory of the production of space, Christian Schmid; During the urban revolution - conjunctures on the streets of Dhaka, Elisa T. Bertuzzo; Where Lefebvre meets the East: urbanization in Hong Kong, Wing-Shing Tang; Henri Lefebvre and ’colonization’: from reinterpretation to research, Stefan Kipfer and Kanishka Goonewardena. Part II Contradictions of Abstract Space: Plan Puebla Panama: the violence of abstract space, Japhy Wilson; ’Greater Paris’: urbanization but no urbanity - how Lefebvre predicted our metropolitan future, Jean-Pierre Garnier; The production of urban competitiveness: modelling 22@Barcelona, Greig Charnock and Ramon Ribera-Fumaz; Reconstructing New Orleans and the right to the city, M. Christine Boyer. Part III Everyday Architectures: Ground exploration: producing everyday life at the South Bank, 1948-1951, Nick Beech; The space of the square: a Lefebvrean archaeology of Budapest, à kos Moravánszky; The archi-texture of power: an inquiry into the spatial textures of post-socialist Sarajevo, Mejrema Zatri; For difference ’in and through’ São Paulo: the regressive-progressive method, Fraya Frehse. Part IV Urban Society and its Projects: Architectural project and the agency of representation: the case of Nowa Huta, Poland, Å ukasz Stanek; The debate about Berlin Tempelhof Airport, or: a Lefebvrean critique of recent debates about affect in geography, Ulrich Best; Novi Beograd: reinventing Utopia, Ljiljana Blagojevi; Lefebvrean vaguenesses: going beyond diversion in the production of new spaces, Jan Lilliendahl Larsen. Index.

Šukasz Stanek is a Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Manchester, UK; Christian Schmid is Professor of Sociology at the School of Architecture, ETH Zürich, Switzerland and à kos Moravánszky is Professor of Architecture, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.