Urban Commons and the Right to Ambiance: Gentrification Policies and Urban Social Movements in Barcelona, Athens and Istanbul

Charalampos Tsavdaroglou

Keywords: urban commons, right to the ambiance, gentrification

While the last years the discussion on urban commons is becoming increasingly popular among urban scholars, there have been few attempts to think it together with the notion of ambiance. During the current rising tide of urban revolts, the rebels do not just claim the urban space from the sovereign power but they occupy and tend to transform it to common space. In parallel, neoliberal urban policies tend to appropriate both the city ambiance and the common space, through gentrification policies. Consequently the discourse on common space has to be reconsidered and to be connected with the right to ambiance, as the latter is becoming the hybrid arena of cultural, gender, political and social urban conflicts.