ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to review the relevance of Henri Lefebvre work to current practice in England. The United Kingdom has a long history of experimenting with mainly local consultative and participatory organisational arrangements in relation to planning and urban development. The chapter discusses some of the key concepts linked to the right to the city and explores in more detail some examples of community engagement in the field of urban planning and development. Henri Lefebvre key works on the city and urban space set out both an analysis of the current urban predicament and suggestions about how a fully liberated society might be created. The chapter describes an evaluation of how far the examples identified might best be defined as procedural concessions and how far they challenge the dominant neoliberal consensus which privileges unconstrained profit-orientated urban development.
