David Harvey's 2008 essay in New Left Review revived Henri Lefebvre's 1968 claim that city inhabitants hold a collective right to shape the process of urbanisation, not merely to access existing services. Harvey reframed the idea around capital, accumulation and the recurring displacement of the poor through redevelopment. The slogan was taken up by housing and anti-eviction movements and embedded in instruments such as the World Charter for the Right to the City and several city constitutions and statutes. It offered a rights vocabulary that linked everyday urban grievances to a broader critique of capitalist urbanisation.
It gave grassroots and anti-displacement movements a shared, portable language for contesting how cities are built and for whom. The frame fed into participatory budgeting, tenant organising and the rights language of the UN New Urban Agenda.