Introduction

Differential space is the conceptual culmination of the major spatial themes of this book. That said, I argue that it is essential to consider differential space and the right to the city as related intimately. Lefebvre developed both concepts in the politically volatile Parisian years of the mid-1960s. He did so partly in response to the evident political tensions and spatial contradictions impacting on France, especially Nanterre and Paris, in this turbulent epoch. Lefebvre developed the concept of the right to the city in his 1968 book Le droit à la ville: publication of which predated the May disturbances of that year. In the same year his book L’irruption de Nanterre au sommet was published in which he begins to develop the concept of differential space. It is unlikely to be coincidence that these books followed in close succession and I contend the right to differential urban space is a fundamental right to the city. Lefebvre counter-poses the abstract homogenised space of neo-capitalism against heterogeneous space of difference and the everyday lived space of ordinary urban inhabitants. Although the powerful spatial practice and dominant representations of space subjugate the urban realm through the production of abstract space, it is possible for differential space to emerge.