“The right to the city” in Athens during a crisis era Between inversion, assimilation and going beyond

Ever since the book of Henri Lefebvre “The right to the city” was published in 1968 it served as a great inspiration for several scholars, researchers, academics and activists. Being the point of departure for various urban movements, it contributed to a wave of resistance and destabilization of sovereignty in many parts of the western world during the turbulent decades of the 60s and 70s. While it has become extremely popular or even fashionable, it often appears detached from its original meaning. Various forms of sovereignty used its revolutionary and innovative rhetoric in an attempt to grand radical contexts in their political agendas. Forty five years after the first publication of Lefebvre’s book, the Athenian metropolis, a city in the (epi)center of the crisis turmoil, is governed by a municipal authority party that goes under the name of “Right to the City”. The party adopted much of Lefebvre’s revolutionary rhetoric, such as “the city as oeuvre”, in order to form its political agenda and win the municipal elections of 2010 and 2014. Ever since, a political program is applied based on a rather distorted interpretation of “the right to the city”. In this chapter two approaches of “The right to the city” (‘TRTTC’ from now on) will be confronted. On the one hand the Lefebvrian notion of the 1960s and on the other hand Kaminis’ (the Athens mayoral candidate) appropriation of 2010 and 2014. The first approach is considered as an effort to introduce the Marxian thought in spatial thinking in order to contribute to the emerging emancipatory movements, and the second as a fine example of distortion of contexts in favor of gaining power and promoting neoliberal policies.