ABSTRACT

At the center of the redeveloped waterfront in Buenos Aires, a new addition to the landscape in 2006 seemed to support the right to the city in quite radical fashion. In this privileged quarter of the city, the proprietor of a failed kiosk decided to gift the space to famous local activist Raúl Castells in order to open a soup kitchen for children in need, and to stage graphic posters decrying deadly inequalities across Argentina (Lipcovich 2006). Access to free sustenance and grounds for protesting injustice in this particular location, however, were more remarkable because they were an affront to the right kind of city. Indeed, indignation in Puerto Madero over this aberrant tenant was fiery (Murphy 2006). The property holder, while perhaps genuinely supporting these causes, knew that giving ground to Castells would spur an uproar because his presence was so antithetical to the predominantly elite and middle-class character of the neighborhood, which was exactly the point, as this disgruntled impresario sought to express his own ire over local certification disputes with creative flair. While the case of Castells in Puerto Madero is just one illustrative example, this pitting of privileged actors against each other represents an especially contentious yet common urban dynamic among the burgeoning middle classes across the Global South in quests that actually undermine the right to the city by attempting to create the right kind of city, which is always subjective and largely self-referential in class terms.