occupied: public space and the 99%

Arch 219 Fall 2011 Public Space Analysis - Final PaperMargaret Crawford Schuknecht & Tidmore

A. Schuknecht, R. Tidmore

OCCUPIED: PUBLIC SPACE AND THE 99%

Arch 219 Fall 2011 Public Space Analysis - Final PaperMargaret Crawford Schuknecht & Tidmore Occupied: Public Space and the 99%

Author’s Note: We have studied and participated in actions of occupy encampments in Oakland, San Francisco and on the UC Berkeley campus. We are first-hand witnesses of the use of police brutality to clear the encampment on campus – jabbing and overhand baton swings to the faces of students on November 9th were followed by practiced intimidation tactics by police officers in riot gear, and the eventual elimination of the camp on campus. The following essay follows from spatial analysis and interviews of participants in San Francisco and Oakland Occupy encampments, from our own experiences with the encampments and related protests, and from a semester-long study of “publics and their spaces”.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to peti-tion the Government for a redress of grievances.

1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Early morning on the 4th of June, 1989, tanks and troops arrived at Tiananmen Square in Beijing to

clear an encampment of protesters that had been occupying the space since the middle of April. What started

as a mass mourning over the death of a popular government official had grown into a movement concerned

with democracy, anti-corruption, freedom of speech, and finally the right to occupy.

Prior to the military’s arrival, the square had been inhabited for an entirely different purpose than for

which it was originally conceived. Built during the time of Mao Zedong, a space that reflected imperialism, pow-

er, and exclusive use by a totalitarian regime had become a civic space characterized by populism and used to

display unmediated anger at the government. Massive support for the protesters’ cause and a clear memory of

the government’s overwhelming use of force to squash the protest has cemented global opinion in support of

the civic occupation of Tiananmen Square, but the story in Beijing is much different. While China’s recent boom

has, in some cases, amounted to a growth in publicly available open space, the creation of civic open spaces

in new urban developments have not followed. Rather than reflecting support of occupation and protest as a

legitimate use of public space, China’s urban development practices exhibit an attempt to control social unrest.

While this is not a new development in China, it represents a dangerous direction that our country could take if

it continues its similarly harsh repression of the peoples’ rights to occupy public space.

Occupation as a method of protest has a long history in the US. In the late 1700s, veterans gathered

at the capitol for several weeks to demand pay. In 1932 the Bonus Army veterans’ encampment at the Mall in

Washington DC was dismantled by tanks and cavalry after several months of occupation. In 1971 and 1976

Vietnam War vets occupied the statue of liberty to bring attention to their cause. With varying success, oc-

cupations of public space have been used since the founding of the United States to draw attention to under-

recognized problems and, very literally, to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Each time, the

protests have been dismantled by force, and that decision has often been politically unpopular. More recently,


the #Occupy movement has demonstrated once again that the right to use public space for protest continues

to be extremely limited.

Occupy Wall Street began as a protest against the inequalities inherent in our current political and

economic systems, but the forceful crackdowns on protesters across the nation indicate that something else

is at stake - the right to public space. By losing our ability to occupy public space, we are losing a major outlet

in the free expression of our 1st amendment rights. Furthermore, by repeatedly dismantling protest encamp-

ments using military tactics, the government is sending the message that dissent will not be tolerated unless it

can be carefully contained. In this new realm, public civic space is valued not for its democratic purpose of civic

engagement, not for public debate and the exercise of free speech, but as a highly controlled dressing to be

adorned to the layout of a city grid.

Locating the Public Sphere

The Occupy movement does not exist as part of the state nor of the economy, though it’s goal is to

influence both. It is part of what Juergen Habermas defines as the theoretical “public sphere”. The so-called

public sphere is located between private interests of the economy and public matters of the state. Given that

the movement is a response to the increased influence of economic private interests in the supposedly publicly

controlled government, Occupy’s location within the theoretical public sphere is extremely relevant. In

essence, Occupy is the public sphere manifested in physical space. This democratic region between state and

economy is used to influence public opinion in order to affect both political and economic change. As the core

of our democracy, the public sphere is both powerful and highly contested, with different groups vying for public

support.

Rational Discourse

To influence public opinion, groups employ different methods to attract attention and gain support.

Habermas’ original definition of the public sphere limited it to rational discourse. However, as Nancy Fraser

recognizes, and Mario Savio so eloquently put it, “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes

so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And

you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus,

and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it

that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” There is therefore a limit to what

Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Social Text, no 25/26, 1990, 57.

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can be accomplished by Habermas’ idealized rational discourse. The physical occupation of public space,

which generated enough support to give the movement a significant voice for change within the system, has

proven the effectiveness of confrontational protest tactics that are decidedly non-discursive. However, the suc-

cess of the horizontally-democratic General Assemblies (with their open “Stacks” and People’s Mic processes)

have shown that rational discourse is a powerful and effective tool for change. It appears that movements

must employ both tactics if they are to be successful. In the #Occupy Model, discursive interactions at Gen-

eral Assemblies create and deliberate upon which protest tactics and what actions to take in the future. This

model ensures that all activities are considered and that those deemed most appropriate are carried forward.

Paradoxically, as the actions of some anarchists have demonstrated in Oakland, the horizontal nature of the

movement also ensures that all individual actions may still be carried out, regardless of their support in general

assemblies.

The “People’s Mic” and “Stacks” procedures also limit the amount of mediation that occurs between the

sender and the receiver of information. They serve to reduce what Linda Alcoff refers to as, “speaking for

others” whereby a person purports to represent the interests of a larger group of people. At the beginning of

the stacks process, the speaker customarily locates his or herself in relation to the crowd that is gathered, so

that any inherent biases in location can be considered by each member of the crowd. In general, the tactics

used at Occupy suggest an intimate understanding of democratic process. They are arguably the clearest

examples of the power of direct democracy in action today, ensuring as much as possible that the multiple

publics represented by the slogan, “We are the 99%” are represented fairly and democratically.

Multiple Publics

The idea of multiple publics is fundamental to the functioning democracy of the public sphere. With-

out acknowledging that multiple publics exist (and that there does not exist one single unified public), Fraser

argues that we make the mistake of ignoring important actors, resulting in a public sphere that is inherently

exclusionary. Movements typically encompass multiple groups of people with different interests and agendas,

and the same is true of Occupy. In the encampments there are labor organizers, the unemployed, traveling

activists, homeless people, teachers’ unions, students, anarchists, and families. The strength of Occupy’s anti-

hierarchical nature is that it prevents one public from dominating the conversation or the direction of the move-

Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Social Text, no. 25/26, 1990, 62. Linda Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” in Cultural Critique, no. 20, Winter 1991-1992, 6. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Social Text, no. 25/26, 1990, 65-66.

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ment. It is defiantly leaderless, and it has blatantly refused to voice any demands, thereby passively accepting

all publics (and their varied complaints, causes, and issues) under its banner. However, #OWS goes beyond

simply giving a voice to multiple publics. Following Fraser’s insistence that a public must define itself in order

to participate in the public sphere, Occupy is essentially defining itself as a new public, one that unites almost

all others: the 99% of the population that controls only 60% of the wealth in the country. By encompassing the

largest public imaginable, this definition of the movement was an extremely successful tactical strategy that

initially gave #OWS wide public support, and helped prevent fragmentation among different interest groups.

Public Quasi-spaces

The Occupy movement has always existed in the “public quasi-spaces” of information transfer; inter-

net, cell phones and news outlets have been integral to the movement’s organizational and support strategy.

But first and foremost OWS and its offshoots have been physical occupations of material space, acted out by

multiple publics who often protest with shared goals but for their own reasons. By closely evaluating two site-

specific examples of encampments, we can begin to first locate the faces of the “multiple publics” found in the

tents on the ground. Second, we can start to evaluate how this movement has the potential to interact, in real

life, with the theoretical underpinnings that speak to the nature of public spaces, and what it takes for public

space to foster civic engagement.

Local Analysis

Two Bay Area examples of occupy encampments show how designed spatial form interacts with vary-

ing social contexts to display two very different incarnations of Habermas’ public sphere. Occupy San

Francisco and Occupy Oakland existed in very different spaces. Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland (renamed

‘Oscar Grant Plaza’ by occupiers) seems ideally designed for occupation and public discourse, whereas Justin

Herman Plaza in San Francisco, (though located in the more relevant financial district), appears to be laid out

in a way that could work for occupation and nothing else. At first glance, the general character of the encamp-

ments followed the logic of their respective spatial designs, but a closer analysis shows that the truth, as

always, is much more complicated.

Justin Herman Plaza is located at the intersection of Market St. and Embarcadero, two of San

Francisco’s main thoroughfares, and near the center of San Francisco’s prime tourist and economic district.

Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Social Text, no. 25/26, 1990, 66-67. Crawford & Cenzatti, “On Public Spaces, Quasi-Public Spaces and Public Quasi-Spaces,” in Modulus, no. 24, 1998, 19.

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Arch 219 Fall 2011 Public Space Analysis - Final PaperMargaret Crawford Schuknecht & Tidmore 1946

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2011

The occupied area is one of three previously

developed lots fronting the ferry building that were

cleared for construction of the Embarcadero Freeway in

the 1960s. When the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989

damaged the freeway, the structure was torn down, the

embarcadero roadway was redesigned, and the three

adjacent city lots were left undeveloped for use as public

space.

The space has undergone dramatic change since

its inception, but has arrived at a design that, for various

reasons, has been largely unused and unsuccessful. It is

a leftover space – a remnant scar of large infrastructure,

open to, but unused by the day-to-day publics that work,

live and shop in adjacent buildings and spaces.

Justin Herman Plaza, occupy area in yellow


Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland has less complex origins. First named ‘Civic Center Plaza’, it was

predictably located directly in front of Oakland City Hall nearly one hundred years ago. After the Loma Prieta

earthquake in ’89, several of the adjacent streets were decommissioned and the park design was amended to

encourage a more vibrant pedestrian life.

1914 2010

Justin Herman Plaza, occupy area in yellow Frank Ogawa Plaza


Frank Ogawa Plaza has always been a civic space. It was designed for this purpose, and has histori-

cally been used as such. The landscape at Frank Ogawa can be divided into two clear areas, aptly named

“The Commons” and “The Forum”. The Commons is an open raised lawn, unprogrammed and undivided. To

organize the space, Occupy Oakland found it necessary to clearly demarcate paths to dictate where campers

could and could not set up tents.

“THE COMMONS”


The Forum, sited directly adjacent to the entrance of city hall, is a large sunken amphitheater with a

seating capacity that numbers in the hundreds. The space could be used for a variety of daytime activities, but

proved to be a perfect venue for the encampment’s general assemblies, which required the ability to serve an

audience of up to 1,000 people - many times the number of people that were actually living in the camp.

The entire camp at Frank Ogawa Plaza was permeable, and the space for general assembly was

obvious and easily accessible.

“THE COMMONS”

“THE FORUM”


At Justin Herman Plaza the story is much different. The central lawn, which shrunk in 2011 due to the

addition of bocce ball courts, is visually hidden and topographically buffered from the embarcadero, and is

primarily accessible from only one direction. This orientation dictated the location of the encampment’s

information booth and donation drop-off, and resulted in an encampment that was visually and physically cut-

off from the main pedestrian routes in the area.

The lawn is surrounded by hardscape, and a ramp runs along the raised buffer that served as a main

access to the upper encampment. Circulation into and through the camp was defined by these elements, and

the original open spaces used for general assembly were comprised of leftover spaces after ideal spots for

encampment and services were exhausted. As the camp grew, even these small open spaces diminished, and

general assemblies were relegated to the seat walls and paths that were most difficult to occupy. These

spaces, from the beginning of the encampment, have been notably far from the camp entrance.

Justin Herman Plaza, topographic buffer


Though the locations of the restrooms, kitchen and supply tent changed in response to growth of the

encampment, the original, predictably organized layout of Occupy San Francisco remained fairly static.

General assemblies on the scale of Occupy Oakland might never have been possible in San Francisco, and at

first glance it appeared that this fact negated the possibility of an equivalent level of social organization. Frank

Ogawa Plaza has all of the physical ingredients needed to describe a successful democratic civic space, while

Justin Herman Plaza has almost none of them. Did the spatial encouragement of civic debate and rational

discourse in Oakland lead to greater success than the spatial encouragement in San Francisco of mere

discursive interaction?

Justin Herman Plaza, topographic buffer

Justin Herman Plaza, spacial organization


While Occupy San Francisco appeared to be “just occupying,” Occupy Oakland, after all, had organized

a city-wide general strike and in less than a week, had mobilized thousands of people to shut down the Port of

Oakland. But it would be false, in this case, to wholly credit spatial determinism for the actions of people. The

designed layout of each plaza may have determined the way in which they were occupied, but it is necessary

to look at demographics and the social/historical context of the two encampments to gain a clear

understanding of how they progressed.

In the beginning weeks of Occupy Oakland, the general assemblies seemed to represent a significant

cross-section of the “99%”. Students, families, people of various religious faiths, and other ‘well respected’

representatives of the middle class were all present. There were indeed multiple publics represented at Oscar

Grant Plaza; people of diverse backgrounds and mixed demands came together regularly in those weeks to

participate in direct democracy. Public support was high, and people were easily organized and mobilized. The

diversity of people reflected broad and diverse public support, not merely for the occupation of space, but for

the cause of the movement. As has been the case with many historic protest occupations in the US, anger at

the state had brought out the masses in Oakland. Support for the Oakland encampment was partially derived

from the People of Oakland’s troubled historical relationship with police, and grew from public outrage over the

serious injury (by the OPD) of an Iraqi war veteran who had been defending the camp.

In Justin Herman Plaza, however, the round-the-clock police presence reflected a different relationship.

Smiling cops wandered the camp and were largely ignored. A conversation with one police officer was

revealing: “why would we need to shut them down? I mean, look at ‘em.” The officer was supportive of the

movement but indifferent about the San Francisco camp, believing that nothing good could be accomplished

without the presence of the (mostly absent) middle-class, yet also believing that no harm was being done.

From an outsider’s perspective, Occupy San Francisco looked to be comprised solely of street kids, druggies

and rainbow kids, mostly white, nearly all young, and apparently harmless.

As the weeks progressed, the encampments underwent striking changes, and it became obvious that

no clear assumptions could be made about who was occupying and where they came from. Public support

waned in Oakland and the character of the camp began to look disorganized. A shooting nearby had scared

away nearly twenty tents, and petty theft appeared to be affecting cohesion. Occupy San Francisco was

making plans to expand and reassert their original message, and they were able to sustain themselves and

organize by interacting socially during the day and by participating in small daily meetings of the general

assembly.

The makeup of each camp was confusing and disorienting. They both felt exclusive and indifferent until

one interacted with any of the inhabitants and it became clear that there was really no group to belong to or be


isolated from. Each camp had its share of traveling street people and rainbow kids, and each camp housed a

number of the well educated but recently unemployed. There were anarchists and activists, drug users and a

wide cross-section of the homeless. People came to donate their services and time, people came off the street

to show their support and ask questions, and people came to dance and be merry.

Occupy SF and Occupy Oakland are clearly comprised of multiple publics with diverse interests, even

different political viewpoints. The one thing that united the multiple publics was the belief that they had the right

to be there, occupying public space in order to voice their grievances against the current system. It is this belief

in the right to public space and to use such space for free expression that defines them as representatives of

the 99%.

Rights

The notion of rights in public space is fundamental to the conversation about Occupy. From the move-

ment’s inception, the movement was based on the First Amendment right to peacefully gather and express

discontent with the government. The act of protest has historically happened in public space, where citizens

are lawfully allowed to assemble, but the widespread crackdowns on Occupy camps across the country call

into question the extent of our rights in public space.

Don Mitchell defined democracy as a series of rights and the struggle between groups for different

rights. According to Mitchell, the main contestation is between the state (which upholds and creates rights)

and the public (whom the rights are enacted upon).

Henri Lefebvre argued in the 1990s that people have a “right to the city;” to the ouvre of the city; the

collective work of the city. He wrote that cities were necessarily public, and that groups must struggle with one

another over issues such as access to public space and the rights of citizens. Furthermore, Lefebvre

recognized that the collective ouvre of the city was at risk of being taken over by the economic elite. He

argued that the right to the city was more than access to its products and goods, but that it required more: “The

right to the city manifests itself as a superior form of rights: right to freedom, to individualization in socialization,

to habitat and to inhabit. The right to the ouvre, to participation and appropriation, are implied in the right to the

city.” This economic and power disparity is at the heart of the modern Occupy movement, and protestors have

Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: The Guilford Press, 2003), 24-27. Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: The Guilford Press, 2003), 18. Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit à la ville, Paris: Anthropos, 1968), 174

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arguably exercised their right to the city by occupying public space.

Mitchell built upon Lefebvre’s argument by stating that if there is a right to the city, it follows that there

is a right to inhabit the city, which is problematic when the right to inhabit the city is fundamentally exclusive.

Currently, in order to possess a right to the city, one must have the financial means to do so. If a person

cannot afford a home, space does not exist for that person to inhabit. He or she must do so in public space.

The right to inhabit the city therefore challenges the assumptions made by private property rights. The Occupy

movement directly challenged these rights (which homeless have always challenged) by performing private

acts in a public forum. Sleeping, eating, and the like are typically acts reserved for private space, yet by

performing these acts in public, Occupiers push the limits on what is allowed in public space. However, state-

sanctioned actions against Occupy protesters and the homeless indicate that public space is not to be used for

such purposes. This un-equal, privileged access to public space is in direct conflict with the First Amendment

rights to free speech that are guaranteed by the Constitution.

By the time of our last visit, the encampments at both San Francisco and Oakland had become places

for homeless people to seek food and medical services, and this was a source of pride for one medic in the SF

camp. The services that weren’t being provided by the state, in this case, were being provided by the encamp-

ments. The occupiers at Justin Herman Plaza maintained a relatively amicable relationship with the state, en-

gaging in talks with city officials which led to agreements on both sides. They picked up their tents periodically

and allowed the grounds to be power washed, and they avoided, for a time, camping on the bocce ball courts.

And while the more strained relationship in Oakland affected the actions of the occupy movement, it did not ap-

pear to immediately affect the encampment’s cleanliness or relationship with the surrounding neighborhood.

By dismantling the encampments at both Frank Ogawa and Justin Herman Plazas, the local

governments of Oakland and San Francisco have demonstrated that the rights to public space are not contin-

gent on peaceful occupation, nor are they contingent on the demographics of the occupiers. Nor is it a

question, as has been argued, of the public health standards at the occupy encampments. Rather, repeated

use of force to eliminate the camps reflects rather the government’s basic belief that occupation of public space

is an illegitimate form of protest.

The speed at which the encampments changed, the diversity of actors from the onset, and the

complexity of each social and historical context makes categorization of the occupy protesters in Oakland and

San Francisco impossible. More importantly, this categorization is unnecessary. On November 14th, tents and

Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: The Guilford Press, 2003), 19.

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belongings in Frank Ogawa Plaza were destroyed for the second time by hundreds of police, some clad in riot

gear. Three weeks later the same fate hit the encampment in Justin Herman Plaza, and a week later police

cleared San Francisco’s smaller symbolic camp in front of the Federal Reserve. What matters in this case is

the undetermined question of whether, as in the past, a large enough public will be inspired by the occupations

and angered by their elimination to democratically change the future of rights and political motivations as they

relate to civic public space. Who they are is immaterial compared to the larger question of who they represent,

and when their struggle concerns rights, we can be sure that their struggle represents all of us – the 100%.

This is Not the End

The violent and oppressive crackdowns on occupy protests around the country have indicated that the

fundamental right to gather and protest in public space has been seriously compromised. As encampments

are dismantled and the occupation tactics that sparked the movement are being forcibly shut down, #OWS

lives on in the digital realm.

From its inception, #OWS was conceived as both a digital and physical occupation. The movement’s

symbol, #OWS, represents the hashtag that social media outlet Twitter uses to introduce topics. This

two-pronged approach to protest was used successfully in the Arab Spring uprisings, and is being used by

Occupy to organize large numbers of people in ways that would be impossible without the internet’s

unregulated capacity to communicate and share information. This freedom of the internet, like the right to

public space, is also currently under threat from proposed legislation (Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect

Internet Privacy Act) that analysts argue is a contest between First Amendment rights and property rights, with

many corporations supporting the regulation.

Digital outlets have enabled #OWS to garner much wider support and attention than physical

occupations alone would have facilitated. Images of police brutality, military-style responses and iconic scenes

of protest spread virally across the internet. As of 12/11/2011, a video of police pepper-spraying students at UC

Davis had over 4 million views on Youtube. These images, along with news reports of the widespread use of

excessive force against protesters, served to rally further support for the movement. Large-scale organization

of protests, port-shutdowns, strikes, and actions against banks have relied on digital media to spread the word.

Photos and videos taken during these events spread across the internet and provide platforms for discursive

interactions that occur in the Comments section of news outlets, on Facebook, and on blogs.

The digital protests also provide a platform for a significant part of the population to take part. While

the physical occupation of public space plays an integral role as the frontline of the movement, the majority of

protesters cannot, or are not willing to, sleep in the encampments. Many protesters with jobs, classes,


responsibilities or disabilities are prevented from physically participating in the occupation, but the digital realm

allows them to be active by following updates, posting comments, and otherwise making their voices “heard”.

But the long history of occupation as a form of protest and its resultant successes have proven that there is no

substitute for physical protest and real disruptions to the flow of daily life.

It is far too easy to ignore a protest that does not cause tension and disruptions. There have been

carefully crafted controls set in place since the WTO protests in Seattle that separate and fragment protest-

ers, pushing them to less visible corners of the city where they will cause the least amount of disturbance. It

is crucial that the Occupy movement continue to press for the right to occupy and protest in public space. The

movement has revealed once again the sinister fact that our rights to public space are highly controlled and

limited by the state in ways that were heretofore not thought possible. As Mitchell pointed out, democracy is

at its core a struggle for rights. The state, as guarantor of those rights, must continually be pressed to be open

to the voices of our dissent, and exercising our first amendment right to express this dissent can only occur in

public space.

It follows that the Occupy movement must go beyond simply occupying existing public spaces. As

Henri Lefebvre writes, “A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential;

indeed it has failed in that it has not changed life itself, but has merely changed ideological superstructures,

institutions or political apparatuses.” #OWS has so far succeeded in creating temporary public spaces in

privately owned properties like the Oakland Port and Zuccotti Park. Where the people go, public space

follows. The ability of people to create public space simply by their presence has been a powerful force behind

Occupy’s empowering success. The movement needs to continue to grow and make clear that it seeks to be

truly representative of the 99%. It is in the nation’s best interest to follow Occupy through, in the very least, to

the realization of the inalienable freedom to exercise First Amendment rights in public space. The fight for

economic justice is not lost in this battle, but it is a clear prerequisite that the right to fight that battle is

maintained and vehemently protected.

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Donald Nicholson-Smith trans., (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, originally published 1974, translated 1991), 54.

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Bibliography

Alcoff, Linda. “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Cultural Critique, no. 20, Winter 1991-1992.

Crawford, Margaret and Cenzatti, Marco. “On Public Spaces, Quasi-Public Spaces and Public Quasi-Spaces.” Modulus, no. 24, 1998.

Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text, no. 25/26, 1990.

Lefebvre, Henri. Le Droit à la ville. Paris: Anthropos, 1968.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Donald Nicholson-Smith trans. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, originally published 1974, translated 1991.

Mitchell, Don. The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: The Guilford Press, 2003.

*In addition to the above-mentioned sources, this paper drew from conversations and interviews with a number of Occupy protesters at both Oakland and San Francisco.