In this exciting lecture, David Harvey presented his latest book Rebel Cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution (2012, published by Verso), in which he argues that long before the Occupy movement, modern cities had already become the central sites of revolutionary politics, where the deeper currents of social and political change rise to the surface. 

Given the strong relationship between urbanisation and capital accumulation, and the consequent urban roots of both past and present fiscal crises, it follows that the city is a key arena within which class forces clash. The sharpening of these clashes transforms movements for the right to the city into urban uprisings and revolutionary movements. This then poses the key question of how to mobilise and organise a whole city around a movement for revolutionary change?