Cities for All Proposals and Experiences towards the Right to the City Cities for All Proposals and Experiences towards the Right to the City Edited by Ana Sugranyes Charlotte Mathivet Habitat International Coalition, HIC Habitat International Coalition acknowledges the different authors for their collaboration with this publication. We also acknowledge the funding support of MISEREOR. Cities for All: Proposals and Experiences towards the Right to the City Edited by Ana Sugranyes and Charlotte Mathivet-Habitat International Coalition (HIC) First edition - Santiago, Chile, 2010 ISBN: 978-956-208-090-3 Text edition by Charlotte Mathivet and Shelley Buckingham Translations by Shamrock Idiomas Ltda. Design by Andoni Martija Cover photograph by Charlotte Mathivet Photographs in the text from Habitat International Coalition archives Edition Management by Luis Solis Corrections by Eva Salinas Habitat International Coalition (HIC) www.hic-net.org Email: [email protected] HIC General Secretariat Coronel Santiago Bueras, 142, of. 22, 8320135 Santiago, Chile The partial or total reproduction of this book is permitted, always citing the source and authors. Printed in Chile To Han van Putten, and all of those fighting for the right to the city Glossary This book gathers experiences and proposals that have emerged from different contexts. The original texts were written in Spanish, Portuguese, English and French. In the translated texts, we have kept some of the terms in their original language in order to comply with their respective local or regional specificity. To simplify the reading of this book, we present here a definition of four of these terms. Pavement dweller: Expresses a particular reality in India of people who live in extreme poverty on the sidewalks of city streets, where they settle and build their precarious homes. Población (pl. poblaciones): A term used in Chile to define a consolidated settlement, the result of land seizures that took place in the 1950s and 60s, or of poorly urbanized plots of land. The process of urbanization in poblaciones has been undertaken by its pobladores (see definition below) and through several public policy interventions. Poblador (pl. pobladores): A term used in Latin America which adds a social and political connotation to the concept of ‘inhabitant’. It refers to collectives of popular settlements that fight for their space, neighbourhood, street, and rights in the city. Shack: Housing with no security of tenure, built with precarious housing materials, and lacking urban services. Index Prologue Davinder Lamba 11 Introduction Cities for All: Articulating the Social-Urban Capacities Ana Sugranyes and Charlotte Mathivet 13 The Right to the City: Keys to Understanding the Proposal for “Another City is Possible” Charlotte Mathivet 21 Part One PrOPOsals fOr the right tO the City 27 Democracy in Search of the Future City Jordi Borja 29 Countering the Right to the Accessible City: The Perversity of a Consensual Demand Yves Jouffe 43 Examining the Right to the City from a Gender Perspective Shelley Buckingham 57 The Right to the City and Gendered Everyday Life Tovi Fenster 63 A Horizon for Public Policies? Notes on Happiness Patricia Ezquerra, Henry Renna 77 Rights in Cities and the Right to the City? Peter Marcuse 87 A New Alliance for the City? Opportunities and Challenges of a (Globalizing) Right to the City Movement Giuseppe Caruso 99 The Construction Process towards the Right to the City in Latin America Enrique Ortiz 113 The Concept and Implementation of the Right to the City in Anglophone Africa Mobola Fajemirokun 121 Part twO exPerienCes Of the right tO the City 129 People’s struggles against marginalization and forced eviction 131 Abahlali baseMojondolo & the Popular Struggle for the Right to the City in Durban, South Africa Richard Pithouse 133 Pavement-Dwellers’ Movements in Mumbai, India María Cristina Harris 141 Villa Los Cóndores, Temuco, Chile Against Eviction and for the Right to the City Ana Sugranyes 145 Homeless People Fight for the Right to Housing, in Mar del Plata, Argentina Ana Núñez 149 Park Dwellers’ Fight in Osaka, Japan: Homeless demanding the Right to the City Marie Bailloux 155 (Re)claiming Citizenship Rights in Accra, Ghana Afia Afenah The 2008 Beijing Olympics, China María Cristina Harris 169 On Defeats and Triumphs in Exercising the Right to the City: Reflections Based on Recent Experiences in Cities in Argentina Maria Carla Rodríguez, María laura Canestraro, Marianne Von Lücken 173 Inhabitants of Gaziret al-Dhahab Island, Cairo Face Eviction María Cristina Harris 183 From Protest to Proposal to Project in Villa Esfuerzo, Santo Domingo Steffen Lajoie 187 People’s initiatives of empowerment 193 Building Cities for and by the People: The Right to the City in Africa Joseph Fumtim 195 El Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha, Santiago, Chile Charlotte Mathivet, Claudio Pulgar 201 Involving Children in Urban Planning Felipe Morales, Alejandra Elgueta 213 The OUR Waterfront Campaign, Defending the Right to the City in New York Shelley Buckingham 219 Urban Land Committees, Venezuela Héctor Madera 223 Organizing, Power, and Political Support in Caracas, Venezuela Steffen Lajoie 227 We are Making a City, Bolivia Rose Mary Irusta Pérez 233 Community Organizing, Building Power, and Winning a Right to the City in Toronto’s Low Income Neighborhoods Steffen Lajoie 239 Legal framework of the right to the city 245 The History of Urban Reform in Brazil Nelson Saule Júnior, Karina Uzzo 247 Mexico City Charter: The Right to Build the City We Dream About Lorena Zárate 259 Policy and Legal Perspectives on Actualizing the Right to the City in Nigeria Mobola Fajemirokun 267 The Path of the Right to the City in Bolivia Uvaldo Mamani 271 The Social Contract for Housing, Ecuador Silvana Ruiz Pozo, Vanessa Pinto 279 Planning and Public Policies 287 The World Class City Concept and its Repercussions on Urban Planning for Cities in the Asia Pacific Region Arif Hasan 289 Addressing Women’s Urban Safety Through the Right to the City, Poland Shelley Buckingham 301 Graz or the Right to a Human City Marie Bailloux 307 Enjoying Slow Life: Let’s Slow Down Cities! Charlotte Mathivet 311 Biographies 317 Prologue Habitat International Coalition (HIC) is a global network of social movements, organisations and individuals based in more than 100 countries, in the South and North, enhancing thought and action to advance the human right of all to a place to live in peace and dignity. Over the last three decades, the HIC focus has been the nexus between human habitat and human rights and dignity, with due recognition of peoples’ claims and capabilities and the struggle for freedom and solidarity. HIC perspectives go beyond individual rights and assert that the commitment of civil society and the state1 to collective rights and responsibilities is fundamental to realize a just, habitable world — for the many rather than the few. Peoples’ claims, as history testifies, emerge as rights through prolonged struggles. HIC envisages the struggles for various emerging rights — of indigenous people, of migrants, for food sovereignty, for the right to the city, and so on — as challenges for domestic and global civil societies to confront in order to advance the idea that “another world is possible.” HIC commitments to advance the understanding and the resolution of the complex right to the city over the last decades, among other things, have involved creating theoretical and practical knowledge in collaboration with others and sharing it through publications. The first edition of the book, in three languages, is a very substantive, intellectual effort towards this end. Our hope is that the book will inspire many to advance the struggle for the emergence of the right of all to live in peace and dignity in the cities of the world. I sincerely thank all the contributors to the book from around the world, on behalf of HIC. Davinder Lamba HIC President 1 In this book, ‘civil society’ and ‘state’ are written in minuscule letters, so as to respect the link between these two actors of equal importance. Introduction Cities for All: Articulating the Social-Urban Capacities1 Ana Sugranyes and Charlotte Mathivet In the Urban Reform tent during the World Social Forum held in Belém, Brazil, in January 2009, geographer David Harvey stated, “I am very grateful for this invitation because I always learn a great deal from social movements. 2 He ended his lecture by stating that “it s come to the point when it s no longer a matter of accepting what Margaret Thatcher said, that 13 There is no alternative, and we say that there has to be an alternative. There has to be an alternative to capitalism in general. And we can begin to approach that alternative by perceiving the right to the city as a popular and international demand and I hope that we can all join together in that mission.3 This book is a response to that hope and also to the call to unite under the right to the city banner, thus giving the floor to a wide range of actors who fight for the right to the city. The wide variety of views, discourses, cultures and experiences are the guiding themes of this publication. We propose to articulate different ideas and converge their differences towards the same goal: the right to the city as a banner of the struggle against neoliberalism. We are not referring to an ideological abstraction, but to the effects felt by inhabitants in their daily life, including, among others: the lack of access to land and services; insecurity of tenure; evictions which occur for numerous reasons including privatization, property speculation, mega-projects and mega-events; abuse and trafficking of power; the deregulation of public space; and urban planning in the interests of a few. 1 The slogan for the World Urban Forum 5 in 2010 is The Right to the City: Bridging the Urban Divide.