Urban Digital Citizenship & the Right to the City

Drawing on the notions of digital citizenship and the right to the city, Oren Yiftachel proposes a comprehensive framework for understanding and promoting the rights, responsibilities, and ethical norms of urban dwellers in the digital era. Digital citizenship entails not only the responsible use of the internet but also the recognition and exploration of its multiple dimensions and implications. The right to the city extends this notion to the urban context, calling for equal access and participation for all residents in shaping their urban environment. Likewise, in the digital domain, the right to the city demands fair access, democratic governance, and the empowerment of marginalized communities. Both concepts underscore the principles of inclusivity, social justice, and responsible conduct in both digital and urban spaces.

Prof. Oren Yiftachel teaches urban planning and political and legal geography and holds the chair in urban studies at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and is an honorary professor at UCL Departments of Geography and DPU (Bartlett).

His research focuses on critical understandings of space, power and urban society, with a particular interest in an international comparative analysis of Israel/Palestine. Yiftachel has published The Power of planning (Kluwer, 2000), Ethnocracy: land and identity politics in Israel/Palestine (Penn 2006); Emptied lands: the legal geography of the Bedouins (with Kedar and Amara, Stanford, 2018); Land/power: from ethnocracy to creeping apartheid (Resling, 2021).
Yiftachel is an activist in a range of human rights and social justice organizations and a cofounder of a Palestinian/Israeli peace movement– “a land for all”.