City Lab takes as a founding premise the proposition that inequity and inequality, in all its forms, is inherent to human relations. It assumes forms of oppression permeate our social, political, economic, and cultural systems. City Lab acknowledges the systemic nature of oppression, and takes up the challenge of confronting and dismantling systemic forms of oppression by building an academic commons.
City Lab finds inspiration from critical pedagogy that provides a method for combating systemic oppression. We operate from the position that everyone has the potential to produce knowledge, and every person brings value into the City Lab enterprise. City Lab values the act of commitment to the struggle against systemic oppression. We also value accountability for actions, thoughts, and the knowledge we produce.
While understanding the city to be a place of human suffering, indignity, and oppression, City Lab is also inspired by the revolutionary potential of the urban form. Our inspiration comes from Henri LeFebvre’s “Right to the City” (R2C), which posits that every urban dweller has the right to transform the city and the right to be transformed by the city.
Dharavi informal settlement, Mumbai
We aim to bring critical pedagogy into conversation with R2C in the process of building an academic commons defined by anti-oppression. City Lab aspires to be an experimental space, an emergent property in constructing an academic commons. This method is a core foundation to guide our work and set benchmarks for assessment and planning.
City Lab views the work of building the academic commons as an endless process, one inspired by the Zapatista saying, “the revolution is the path you walk.” City Lab places an emphasis on the importance of process in building the academic commons. City Lab acknowledges that along the path there will be mistakes, blunders, ignorances, frustrations, marginalization and oppression, and moments of futility. That is why we also embrace the Zapatista saying, “we question as we walk.” We value transformation and evolution as we walk, and aim to avoid solution driven end-points of the academic enterprise. City Lab takes on the challenge in order to realize moments of liberation and transformation as we struggle to build the academic commons we need in the 21st century.
Part of the effort is to stay engaged with the evolving anti-oppression literature. For a running inventory of what we are reading click here.