ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the character of critical theories of the city has been affected by the ethical turn in political theory. The theoretical genesis of the open city can be trace back to one of the most influential urban theorists of the mid to late twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre. It is Lefebvre's novel theorization of space, less so than his conception of actual cities, which has most influenced contemporary critical urban studies. His work in the 1950s-1970s serves as the singularly most important theoretical inspiration for the burst of interest in privileging space over time that came to dominate critical urban studies in the waning decades of the twentieth century. These include cosmopolitan commitments commitments that have had a strangely de-territorializing effect on the city. The city's concrete character, its intimate ties to situated communities, is dispersed and diluted in an ephemeral and floating constellation of almost absolute difference.
