The right to the city is a concept that was first proposed by Henri Lefebvre’s book ‘Le Droit à la Ville’ in 1968 and that has been reclaimed more recently by social movements, thinkers and several progressive local authorities alike as a call to action to reclaim the city as a co-created space—a place for life detached from the growing effects that commodification and capitalism have had over social interaction and the rise of spatial inequalities in worldwide cities throughout the last two centuries. Today, the right to the city theory has inspired many social movements in the world, especially in the Middle East (e.g. Arab Spring movements and conquering the public squares of the cities by citizens, the Istanbul movement in Taksim square, the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York). Urban public space is the place where all the collective social movements and collective memory of citizens occur. However, the main question around the neoliberal city of today is how and who will create the public space and for whom will this space be created? The aim of this chapter is to discuss the triple notions of space production, collective use of space and the right to the city in the context of the neoliberal cities of the Middle East. We will use a desktop review and case study approach to explain how, in the neoliberal city of today, the occupation of collective space in favour of private profit upsets and impinges upon the general right to the city. All the while discussing the participation of citizens in the process of space production and the increase in the collective use of public space, hence extending and enlarging the citizenry’s right to the city.
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Neoliberal discourse often conceptualizes nature in relation to its market utility and economic development. This article will address the role of metaphors in shaping neoliberal discourse in business education. The aim of this article is to reveal reasoning patterns about environmental problems and economic development in students of sustainable business minor. The case study described in this article involves business students at The Hague University in The Netherlands. This case study aimed to explore a shift in student understanding of environmental problems and economic development before and after the intervention. The results suggest that critical curriculum can inform students about the alternative conceptions as well as instruct them about potential solutions to the sustainability challenges. The article culminates with the argument that without goal-oriented education for sustainability; neoliberal education may not permit transcendence from unsustainable practices. https://doi.org/10.3390/su6117496 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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The recent shift towards the interdisciplinary study of the human-environment relationship is largely driven by environmental justice debates. This article will distinguish four types of environmental justice and link them to questions of neoliberalism and altruism. First, environmental justice seeks to redress inequitable distribution of environmental burdens to vulnerable groups and economically disadvantaged populations. Second, environmental justice highlights the developed and developing countries’ unequal exposure to environmental risks and benefits. Third, temporal environmental justice refers to the issues associated with intergenerational justice or concern for future generations of humans. In all three cases, environmental justice entails equitable distribution of burdens and benefits to different nations or social groups. By contrast, ecological justice involves biospheric egalitarianism or justice between species. This article will focus on ecological justice since the rights of non-human species lags behind social justice debates and discuss the implications of including biospheric egalitarianism in environmental justice debates. https://doi.org/10.1186/2194-6434-1-8 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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