Why talking about 'The right to the city' in a time of neoliberalization.

This contribution is about one issue, namely why there is a new and compelling claim to ‘ the right to the city’, and also a turn toward rights in general. The scope is limited, and consists in trying to answer this question through a critical re-reading of ‘The right to the city’ of Henry Lefebvre and of David Harvey’s essay with the same title, and through a comparison of some of their fundamental arguments with discourses on power, hegemony, and socio-spatial configurations related to neoliberal restructuring. The paper argue that the right to the city is a too abstract concept to be used. It needs translations in order to have its principles realized, and to disclose the actual processes related to socio-spatial restructuration. Some articulation of the concept of right clarify the relationship between the ‘right to the city’ and ‘the right of inhabiting’, and also the possible solution of the dichotomy of ‘right’ and ‘power’ which dominated the reflection for years.