Contextualising the Right to the City in China

Abstract

This paper revisits the concept of the right to the city by Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) and contextualises it in the context. Different from previous debate that focused on the issue of right within this concept, this paper highlights the significance of city per se within this concept and argues that as according to Lefebvre, only when the city has been produced as an oeuvre, the use value of the city can be prioritised over its exchange value and thus guarantees the right to the city. This paper then visits the mechanism of urban development in China before the Economic Reform to explore the possibility of understanding socialist city as an oeuvre and how it could contribute to our contemporary research agenda.