Why focus on URBAN social
movements?
• Urban social movements of the late 1960s and
early 1970s changed the direction of urban
political geography
• Scholars moved away from electoral politics and
the study of voting behavior to look at a range of
governmental and extra-governmental influences
on city life
• These include social networks influence of
ratepayers groups, businessmen’s associations, and
a range of non-profits
• Scholars began to focus on the structural
inequities in cities and the informal and formal
associations developed by citizens to address these
inequities
• Analyses extend beyond class divisions to look at
other social divisions in society [gender, ethnocultural differences et cetera]
- Harvey Social Justice and the City
– Castells The City and the Grassroots
– Katznelson City Trenches
– Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals
– Piven and Cloward Poor Peoples Movements
– Joe Feagin and Harlan Hahn Ghetto Revolts
• Urban social movements represent a new
relationship between production based and
consumption based politics, between work
and home.
What are Urban social Movements?
• Collective actions consciously aimed at
transforming the social interests and values
embedded in any city
1. Demands focussed on collective
consumption: good produced directly or
indirectly by the state
2. Demands focussed on cultural identity
3. Political mobilization in relation to state
A SOCIAL movement is not necessarily an
URBAN social movement:
• It must intend to transform some aspect of
city life
• Environmental movement, Civil rights
movement, feminist movement are not
URBAN social movements -- BUT can be
linked with them, or have some aspect
expressed at the level of the city
An Urban Protest is not
Automatically and URBAN
social movement
• An urban social movement must be multi
dimensional,
• It encompasses a range of issues and urban
stakeholder groups
A single institution or
organization does not constitute
an urban social movement
• Protest and advocacy groups can link to
urban social movements, but they are not
sufficient in themselves
• E.g. Network for Social Justice, Women
Plan Toronto, Urban Alliance on Race
Relations, OCAP -- all are urban in their
focus, but limited.
Civil Rights Movement in US
• Example of multi-scalar movement that was
partly urban in focus
• Addressed [among other things] segregation
and racial inequity around access to services
[schools, transportation] commerce, voter
registration
Housing segregation
and landlord abuse in
northern cities
White flight to suburbs
leaving decaying inner city
housing
Formation of black
ghettoes in US cities
Migration from small
southern towns to
industrializing cities
Mechanization of
agriculture in the southern
United States
Racial Unrest U.S. Cities 1960s
• 1964-1968 329 important riots involving
hundreds of thousands of black people in
257 American cities leading to 52,000
arrests, 8,000 injured and 220 killed
• 1968 Assassination of Martin Luther King
provoked 202 violent incidents in 172 cities
• 1969 269 civil related disorders reported by
National Advisory Committee on Civil
Disorders
• 1970-71 FBI reported 269 race related
disorders in N.A. cities
Causes of Racial Unrest
• Deprivation and poverty were not the
principle causes of rioting
• Rioting tended to occur in cities where there
was police harassment and lack of local
democratic government
Grass Roots Protests
• Paris Commune 1871
–First point of contact between emerging labour
movement and urban movements
• Rent Strike in Glasgow 1915
–Establish tenant committees to improve housing
conditions
• Watts Riots 1960s
–Non labour movement focussed on racial
inequalities at a variety of scales
•
Grass Roots Protests [continued]
• Grands Ensembles of Paris
– Revolt against social segregation produced by the
construction of large scale high rise modernist social
housing projects
• Gay Movement of San Francisco
– Struggles for equity based on spatially defined gay
community in San Francisco
• Squatters Movements Berlin
– Territorially based movements attempting to develop
and autonomous neighborhoods with different social
cultural and economic forms
• Days of Action Toronto 1990s
– Multi issues movement challenging reduction and
reorganization of services at urban and provincial levels