33

Urban citizenship is given considerable coverage in the scientific literature on the city. In a context of globalization, crisis of politics, ethno-racial diversification of urban areas, urban citizenship – as an alternative to nation state citizenship- is founded on a revised relationship to urban spaces. Urban citizenship is foremost in public actions in the less well-off neighbourhoods. It lies in a dialectic relation between politics, individual or collective engagement and urban spaces, shifting the debate towards the active citizen’s territorial engagement. This article seeks to study this renewed relationship between urban spaces and types of citizenship. It first reviews the development and definition of this notion in social sciences and the way in which geography has incorporated it into analysis of the city. Next citizenship is investigated on the basis of the forms of mobilization which construct a multi-scale dimension and non-linear temporalities in the urban space. Finally, the paper examines the relationship between forms of mobility and the right to the city, a source of political innovation but also of socio-spatial segmentation. Urban citizenship contributes to the regulation and symbolic and material development of the contemporary city and urban areas, by way of the claims and political activism it generates, or the straightforward manifestation of a right.