Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Inspiration
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- List of abbreviations and acronyms
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- One Introduction: Cities and public space
- Two Vancouver: (Re)presenting urban space
- Three Vancouver: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Four Lowell: (Re)presenting urban space
- Five Lowell: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Six Manchester: (Re)presenting urban space
- Seven Manchester: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Eight Venturing beyond Lefebvre: Producing differential space
- Nine Conclusions: Differential space implications
- References
- Primary data sources
- Index
Eight - Venturing beyond Lefebvre: Producing differential space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Inspiration
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- List of abbreviations and acronyms
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- One Introduction: Cities and public space
- Two Vancouver: (Re)presenting urban space
- Three Vancouver: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Four Lowell: (Re)presenting urban space
- Five Lowell: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Six Manchester: (Re)presenting urban space
- Seven Manchester: Producing urban public space and city transformation
- Eight Venturing beyond Lefebvre: Producing differential space
- Nine Conclusions: Differential space implications
- References
- Primary data sources
- Index
Summary
From a less pessimistic standpoint, it can be shown that abstract space harbours specific contradictions. Such spatial contradictions derive in part from the old contradictions thrown up by historical time … Thus, despite – or rather because of – its negativity, abstract space carries within itself the seeds of a new kind of space. I shall call that new space ‘differential space’, because inasmuch as abstract space tends towards homogeneity … a new space cannot be born (produced) unless it accentuates difference. (Lefebvre 1991: 52)
The street contains functions that were overlooked by Le Corbusier: the informative function, the symbolic function, the ludic function. The street is a place to play and learn. The street is disorder. All the elements of urban life, which are fixed and redundant elsewhere, are free to fill the streets and through the streets flow to the centers, where they meet and interact, torn from their fixed abode. The disorder is alive. It informs. It surprises. (Lefebvre 2003: 18–19)
Introduction
Differential space is the conceptual culmination of the major spatial themes of this book. That said, I argue that it is essential to consider differential space and the right to the city as related intimately. Lefebvre developed both concepts in the politically volatile Parisian years of the mid-1960s. He did so partly in response to the evident political tensions and spatial contradictions impacting on France, especially Nanterre and Paris, in this turbulent epoch. Lefebvre developed the concept of the right to the city in his 1968 book Le droit à la ville: publication of which predated the May disturbances of that year. In the same year his book L’irruption de Nanterre au sommet was published in which he begins to develop the concept of differential space. It is unlikely to be coincidence that these books followed in close succession and I contend the right to differential urban space is a fundamental right to the city. Lefebvre counter-poses the abstract homogenised space of neo-capitalism against heterogeneous space of difference and the everyday lived space of ordinary urban inhabitants. Although the powerful spatial practice and dominant representations of space subjugate the urban realm through the production of abstract space, it is possible for differential space to emerge.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Exploring the Production of Urban SpaceDifferential Space in Three Post-Industrial Cities, pp. 265 - 310Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2016