ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to show that many critical urban theorists who think they are formulating properly political analyses of urban phenomena are, in fact, working in a post-political framework. It shows that for the politics of urban common property to be properly political, it benefits from moving beyond reactionary ethical forms by developing a sophisticated understanding of the position of common property in existing legal frameworks via rights-based claims that are more than abstract and moralistic in nature. For all the great insights that Blomley captures in his study of the Woodward's struggle, even he falls into the trap of post-political thinking. Almost all the elements of rejecting a post-political understanding of struggle against dromocratic imperatives in the neoliberal city are there: recognizing antagonism, opposing dromocratic imperatives, and claims to common ownership of urban space. The chapter considers all four theorists – Nick Blomley, Andy Merrifield, and Lynn Staeheli and Don Mitchell – to be working in the theoretical milieu.
