David Harvey's "Rebel Cities"

[stormdog]

The first chunk of David Harvey's "Rebel Cities" positions cities in the context of global capitalism, discussing development trends through history and cities' role as a sink for excess capital. It was heavily economical and, as I noted, a little beyond me. The second part though, which I've just started, is beginning with a discussion of theories of the commons. Anti-capitalist activism, he says, often rejects any kind of hierarchical organization in favor of horizontality. This is problematic because solutions that work for, say, fifty farmers sharing a source of water (or, I imagine, a group of fifty participants in a chapter of Food Not Bombs), do not work at a global scale, or scales beyond the local.

Then, addressing public space in cities, he notes "Public spaces and public goods in the city have always been a matter of state power and public administration, and such spaces and goods do not necessarily a commons make."

This should be interesting.

Also, today's sentence from Duolingo: "How many dogs eat cheese? (¿Cuántos perros comen queso?)"