Right To The City

May 18, 2024 2:40 PM

YouTube channel Radical Planning recently posted Third Place vs. Right to the City [50m] which digs into the theory of cities mostly from a Marxist point of view. Ray Oldenberg, the founder of Third Place Theory, is discussed, and dissed, and then Right To The City as a concept is introduced and discussed. I found it to be informative and interesting and well-sourced.
posted by hippybear (7 comments total)

Thanks for posting this hippybear! It's late and I'll write back later but I think
for anyone who is a human-centred planner, a spatial designer, an activist, priest or politician involved in the city - for space or human rights, and especially if you have not formally studied planning (or lack a background in activism) I think this is the most important presentation you will see this year. Especially if your nation is sliding into fascism/populism.

and for followers of Henri Lefebvre there is about ten minutes of solid analysis and practical application :)

If your time is short start at 35:30.
posted by unearthed at 3:09 AM on May 19

Thanks for this, it was a nice critical history of the "third place" idea I wasn't aware of. It is really hard to imagine building our urban environment without the profit motive through direct democratic control, though. I'm failing to really imagine how things get built without land use regulations and tax incentives for capital investment, or more centralized, delegated public investment of the kind we're used to.
posted by ropeladder at 1:06 PM on May 19

I really appreciate this! I've always found Third Place notions to be pretty unconvincing, and this is the first critique of it I've ever heard. As usual with Marxist and anarchist critique, it's pretty scorching - but I'm left wanting a more concrete vision of alternatives. Definitely going to check out more videos, though.

It's also a good reminder of how important it is to read primary sources - now more than ever. I'm reading Farmers of Forty Centuries by F.H. King, an account of East Asian practices for maintaining yields and soil fertility that was written basically at the same moment that the Haber process was invented. It's really rich stuff.
posted by McBearclaw at 9:56 PM on May 19 [2 favorites]

Thanks for posting!
If your time is short start at 35:30
Appreciated this: Lefebvre's work referenced appears to be Writings on Cities. Always happy to be reminded of rhythmanalysis

People interested in the list of philosophers at 44:10 might like a video on the society of spectacle which references Walter Benjamin
posted by HearHere at 3:22 AM on May 20

I'm just starting, but I disagree straight off the bat: 3rd places may not be explicitly left-wing, but they most assuredly are not right wing. And the theory of them isn't based on some book written in 1989. 3rd places have been known to be left-wing gathering places since uh.....let's say 1909 (randomly) and that's why US urban planning started literally getting rid of them in the 1920s with The Great Depression, and if I had to pick a year, I'd pick around 1989 as the time when people really started to notice they were missing, but they didn't really start making a comeback until 2009.

Now to keep going, because I am intrigued.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:31 AM on May 20

And fine, maybe book guy invented the term 3rd place (I really have no idea) but before that we called them 'commons' and parks most assuredly were 3rd places. I'd even argue this theory that 'bars, coffee shops, community centers' are not the sum total of 3rd places specifically because of the commerce required aspect, with purchases in coffee and bars and memberships for community centers.

I also don't get why Ray Oldenburg's personal opinions are getting so much time in this video. Who cares about this guy?

Also, 'community' wills 3rd places into existing, but it doesn't matter the age of the building. It matters if people there want to form a community.

Sorry I couldn't make it through. I tried. I watched a few more of the narrator guy's other videos instead, and he's dogmatic and wrong about those too.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:44 AM on May 20

I guess... if you bailed out of the video before he got around to talking about the positives he was wanting to plant after removing what he felt were the negatives from Oldenburg, I can understand why you felt the video was a net negative. I felt he spent time trying to untangle some things that might be in people's minds before expressing the things he wanted to put in their place.

But if you have a fundamental disagreement with the person presenting the essay in question...
posted by hippybear at 3:06 PM on May 22 [1 favorite]