Comments on David Harveys The right to the city by Javier Lahuerta Cities are the places where human

beings develop their cultures and by doing that they fully develop themselves, - families, dreams, close and distant relationships-. They build their societies as a whole and while doing that, they become citizens.

As David Harvey puts it, we could agree with the idea or believe that changing the city changes the man and this process also works the other way around. In the city, men not only fight against nature, for survival and to try to make a living but, they fight against each other in the race to success or just in the crude race of survival. Man is a wolf to man, as Thomas Hobbes said.

Nowadays we live in a very complex dynamic environment, where many different worlds are more connected than ever before and the relationships between these worlds, which often created friction and war in the past, are nowadays changing the world all at once and affecting every human being in a clear way, no matter the nation they belong to. Even more, slightest changes in the global economy or in a nations geostrategic plans, have dramatic effects today, even on the up to now untouchable developed countries or the so-called first world, which ruled the planet through the last centuries. The technologies, the aesthetic values, our daily life styles, etc., that we are used to, are the result of our own culture, the culmination of a hundreds of years process that embrace revolutions, fights, ethics, religion, progress, welfare, wars, etc..

Capitalist development, capital surplus production and absortion, its for sure a key point when trying to understand where we are at the moment, why and where we are going.

Whilst growing, progressing and making a living are natural processes and not at all bad things in themselves, the absence of limits and ethics that set up clear boundaries, allows for the whole process to become dehumanised and strike back against us. Is it there actually anybody behind our current lack of values and ethics?. Is anyone feeding our growing materialism and our lack of empathy, or perhaps, provoking the decadence of values we are used to nowadays?. I would like to illustrate this situation with a couple of examples from todays (13th of November 2011) latest news: the first one talks about Victorias Secret fashion show where the beautiful and skinny model Miranda Kerr wears the most expensive brassiere in the world valued at 1.8 million euros, the second one talks about the Abu Dhabi formula 1 grand prix where absolutely everything and everyone smells like oil, and tones of dollars are everywhere. And the whole world, -the existing one at least-, bow down to it.

What are we expecting from ourselves when the ruling powers, -and even ourselves sometimes-, are so happy with the current situation?. Can we ,-the mass-, with few resources and a weak education do anything about it apart from just trying to survive by any means?. Human beings do not set up limits to their ambitions nor to their desires in a natural way. There is a need for an imposed control by a well educated and responsible society. This education it is not only knowledge but values, and these values usually get lost whilst we relax on our comforts and competition, beauty, superficial consumerism, success, etc. become main characteristics in our lives. Bread and circuses for the masses. The same kind of decadence took place in the Roman Empire when corruption and comfort grew in a society with a massive and useless bureaucratic and political class.

David Harvey analyses how capitalism has imposed a radical transformation in our life styles through urbanization processes in order to absorb the surplus product: he changed the city wholesale rather than retail and he states that the urban process has in short gone global with China and the Middle East stabilizing capital in the world. Poverty and exploitation exported elsewhere in the world and elsewhere in our cities, and we dont really care. Brutal processes of land clearance that permit construction and generalized dispossessing proceedings but, are we aware of these situations?, what is happening to our humanity? Are we frozen and anaesthesized?, Do we care at all? Did the cities or what we created in the cities, -our cultures-, provoke that in us?.

In my opinion humanity, empathy, responsibility and other core values are not natural ones, they depend on education. We should take into account that for many in this world, including some of us and some cultures in powerful developing countries, people who suffer, do deserve what life has brought to them. My point of view about this is actually a bit negative, I believe there is no solution to it, it is probably a lost fight since I agree to certain degree with Mr. Albert Einstein that: Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and Im not sure about the former David Harvey puts forward a solution: gaining control over the surplus by focusing on the right to the city. He says: revolution has to be urban. To achieve something worthy we should start from scratch in many areas, focusing on education and social values. We should be aware that our culture is not going to be anymore the ruling one in the world, at least not its social and its humanity aspects.

Apart from that, a very interesting aspect that could give us some hope is the fact that, as current events seem to witness, a global consciousness has awakened across cultures, religions and worldviews. This awakening of global consciousness consists of a shift, from the current patterns of life that lead us to fragmentation, alienation and human pathologies at the individual and collective level, to a higher form of integral patterns of life that bring forth our true moral, and our rational and spiritual nature as a species. Chaos theory seem also to apply to societies dynamics, in other words, the future and the control of the forces that determine how humanity evolve is nowadays more open and undetermined than ever before. Population is slowly gaining control over their destinies and no country or pressure group can actually impose the steps humanity is eventually going to follow. The slightest change anywhere on earth can change the rest of the system. The future is not in our hands but we can have a major impact.

Im not that sure that, by achieving the right to the city we could recover the right to change ourselves but, definitely, its probably one of the only ways in which we can try to have an impact inside and outside our own selfs.