ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the political challenge by focusing on the US-based Right to the City Alliance (RTTCA) as a movement with the potential to remake citizenship and to produce a new urban polity, both of these tasks being key components of institutionalizing a democratic form of counter-governance. The RTTCA report on public housing makes clear that one of the important functions of public housing has been and continues to provide a physical infrastructure for communities and to provide a sense of stability. The chapter outlines the key strategic moves that position "right to the city" as an incubator for new citizenship. They are respectively: the rescaling of citizenship, the focus on the relationship between citizenship and home, the rejection of individual and market-centered citizenship, and the assertion of a right to place as a distinctive feature of the right to the city. The chapter concludes with a brief reflection on both the promises and perils of this particular political mobilization.
