Neoliberalization and Evolution of the " Right to the City "

International audienceFor over two decades, various urban social movements have been growing in a number of cities around the world. Denouncing the effects of the neoliberal hold on the city, they aim to combat exclusion and to rethink the city. In the face of the growing urban inequalities, some have federated around the demand to a “right to the city”. By tracing the history of the international spread of the idea of the right to the city, this article intends to show how its applications have been more or less reworked according to local context. It emphasizes that the related narratives and concepts are endlessly readjusted to the worsening of the urban context by integrating very diverse ambitions to the point of deviating from the initial content, aiming for a profound transformation of society, towards an ethic of the city. But this strong resurgence of the “right to the city” also conveys an awareness of the acceleration and generalization of the injustices in the city resulting from neoliberalism. The components are based on the findings of research carried out around the work of Henri Lefebvre and an analysis of documents derived from national and international reports