The right to the city is a concept introduced by Henry Lefebvre in the 1960s and further developed by David Harvey. It refers to the freedom to construct and reconstruct the city and us all together; it consists of the right to entirely appropriate spaces and participate in all processes therein.
Appropriation is referred to as having a share of the space, using it, owning it, and valuing it because it has use-value; participation in the city includes decision making, constructing, and living in the urban space equally as inhabitants.
Both components of the right to the city can be approached from three dimensions: a. political and economic, b. physical, c. socio-anthropological. Based on the three levels of urban analysis introduced by Lefebvre, these three dimensions can be further categorized.
The levels of the urban include: a. Level G (Global): This level consists of macro institutional guidelines provided by governors and decision-makers in the context of the city’s political economy; b. Level M (Mediator): this level includes the city’s forms, structures, and physical realities; c. Level P (Private): this level consists of the micro understanding of every inhabitant about their inhabiting. By extracting the components of the two dimensions of the right to the city in the three analytical levels, and by applying the quantitative methodological approach, this article aims at investigating gender differences in the realization of the right to the city by measuring the realization of the right to the city based on gender in the Iranian capital city.
Published by Ladan Rahbari
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