Rebel Cities-David Harvey

PREFACEHenri Lefebvre's VisionSometime in the mid 1970s in Paris I came across a poster put out bythe Ecologistes, a radical neighborhood action movement dedicatedto creating a more ecologically sensitive mode of city living, depictingan alternative vision for the city. It was a wonderful ludic portrait ofold Paris reanimated by a neighborhood life, with flowers on balconies,squares full of people and children, small stores and workshops opento the world, cafes galore, fountains flowing, people relishing the riverbank, community gardens here and there (maybe I have invented thatin my memory), evident time to enjoy conversations or smoke a pipe (ahabit not at that time demonized, as I found to my cost when I went toan Ecologiste neighborhood meeting in a densely smoke-filled room). Iloved that poster, but over the years it became so tattered and torn thatI had, to my great regret, to throw it out. I wish I had it back! Somebodyshould reprint it.The contrast with the new Paris that was emerging and threateningto engulf the old was dramatic. The tall building "giants" around thePlace d' Italie were threatening to invade the old city and clasp the handof that awful Tour Montparnasse. The proposed expressway down theLeft Bank, the soulless high-rise public housing (HLMs) out in the 13tharrondissement and in the suburbs, the monopolized commodificationon the streets, the plain disintegration of what had once been a vibrantneighborhood life built around artisanal labor in small workshops in the