Reclaiming the City

Recent political and economic crises have increased the awareness of the need, challenges and opportunities of an increased citizen participation, at the level of local communities, in processes of urban and social regeneration. The promotion of ideas and policies such as the ‘Big Society’ and the Localism Act in the UK appear to provide with a political will and a legal framework to facilitate such participation and community empowerment, albeit these have also been criticized as attempts to implement wide-spread austerity and institutional disengagement. This chapter discusses the conceptual implications of the engagement of local communities in the production of space, and how their participation on spatial practices such as bottom-up place-making and tactical urbanism could facilitate the development of their urban, social and political agencies. The discussion is articulated with an introduction of a relevant political context, followed by the development of a theoretical argument focused around the ideas of Henri Lefebvre about the ‘production of space’ and ‘the rights to the city’, which will be related to the analysis of a case study, the community-led urban regeneration at Granby Four Streets in Liverpool, UK, reflecting on the role of spatial practitioners in the production of a big society.