{"id":11668,"date":"2013-10-16T09:00:29","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=11668"},"modified":"2017-07-27T13:53:16","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T16:53:16","slug":"what-is-the-right-to-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=11668","title":{"rendered":"What Is The Right to the City?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This post is a contribution to Blog Action Day 2013<\/a> in which bloggers around the world reflect on this year’s theme, Human Rights.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the last few years there have been many protests and social movements under the ‘Right to the city’ slogan, from\u00a0residents of public housing projects in New Orleans<\/a>\u00a0wishing to reclaim their old neighborhoods to\u00a0Berliners fighting against the demolition<\/a> of the last remaining part of the Berlin wall in order to build luxury apartments, or in Rio de Janeiro, the struggles of residents resisting eviction<\/a> in the lead up to next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. These issues are all concerned with the Right to the city. But what does this phrase actually mean? What is this ‘right’? Are all entitled to it? Why is it important?<\/p>\n

The origin of the idea<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The concept was first developed by French sociologist Henri Lefebvre<\/a> in his 1968 book Le droit \u00e0 la ville<\/em>. He defines the Right to the city as a right of no exclusion of urban society from qualities and benefits of urban life. In the text Lefebvre writes about socio-economic segregation and its phenomenon of estrangement. He refers to the \u201ctragedy of the banlieusards<\/em>,” people forced into residential ghettos far from the city center. Against this backdrop he demands the Right to the city as a collective reclamation of the urban space by marginalized groups living in the border districts of the city. In the 1990s Lefebvres’ idea was taken up in the fields of geography and urban planning, and became the slogan for many social movements.<\/p>\n

Today, the market-centric city is the focus, including new methods of production and new forms of segregation and exclusion. There is an absence of participation in shaping the city for those who have been excluded from economic development, for those who have been displaced through gentrification<\/a> or for those who are suffering from exclusionary immigration policies. Social theorists David Harvey and Margit Mayer outline the demand for the Right to the city as a kind of request for all the people who live in the city.<\/p>\n

According to Harvey<\/a>: \u201cThe Right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does it mean?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Right to the city is not meant to be understood as an individual legal right. It is often seen as a social utopia and collective claim inspiring ideas and suggestions for social movements and a better world. It is a slogan for movements worldwide which fight against the manifestations of many modern cities in which public processes and utilities have been privatized and where development is driven primarily if not solely by corporations and markets. Gihan Perera, co-founder of the\u00a0Right To The City<\/a>\u00a0Alliance, describes it as:<\/p>\n

The Right to the city is about power for the working class, for people of color, for immigrants, youth and for all others committed to a truly democratic society. A society where all city inhabitants have the power to shape the decisions and the conditions that affect our lives. We fight for concrete improvements that result in stronger communities and a better state of being for our friends, families, and for our children\u2019s futures. Our organizations take on campaigns to win housing, education, transportation, and jobs. We struggle for community safety and security, neighborhood sustainability, environmental justice, and the right to culture, celebration, rest, and public space. These are the material results of our fights to take back the city. These are the goals that the Right to the city frames.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Right to the City in Rio de Janeiro<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In Brazil, the 2001 City Statute<\/a> wrote the Right to the city into federal law. However, in the context of the rapid transformations currently underway in Rio in preparation for next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics and the lack of public participation in these transformations, the collective Right to the city is seriously compromised. Especially affected are favela residents, with tens of thousands facing<\/a> the threat of eviction, undergoing eviction or having already been evicted from their homes. In protests<\/a> and debates across the city, Rio residents are questioning<\/a> to what extent their city is being modeled without them and for others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas This post is a contribution to Blog Action Day 2013 in which bloggers around the world reflect on this year’s theme, Human Rights.\u00a0 Over the last few years there have been […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":11676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1736,1290,335,1282,329,1329],"tags":[1013,1012,11,25,1259,5,152,594,171,1616,1008,130,167],"writer":[1007],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-1736","8":"category-civilsociety","9":"category-policies","10":"category-research-analysis","11":"category-solutions","12":"category-by-international-observers","13":"tag-blog-action-day","14":"tag-blog-action-day-2013-human-rights","15":"tag-forced-evictions","16":"tag-human-rights","17":"tag-mega-events","18":"tag-olympics","19":"tag-participation","20":"tag-participatory-democracy","21":"tag-public-space","22":"tag-reference","23":"tag-right-to-the-city","24":"tag-social-movements","25":"tag-world-cup","26":"writer-patrick-isensee"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11668"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=11668"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=11668"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=11668"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=11668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}