[Reader-list] Is the Right to the City a Viable Legal Concept?

[Patrice Riemens]

Bwo the INURA (http://www.inura.org) list
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From: Andrea Carrión <andrea at hic-net.org>
To: "hic Knut Unger" <unger at mvwit.de>
Subject: Is the Right to the City a Viable Legal Concept?
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 11:15:03 -0300

FYI, an excerpt of the following publication:

Scott Leckie; /Towards the Right to the City. A Possible Means of
Internationalizing Local Struggles through Reliance on Human Rights
Law/; in: How Common is Our Future? Human Settlements, Development and
Environment; Habitat International Coalition; Mexico; 1992; pp. 160-165.

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IS THE "RIGHT TO THE CITY" A VIABLE LEGAL CONCEPT?*

Could the acceptance of "the right to the city"

* be a means of avoiding, both in practical and legal terms, the
fequent legal and perceived conflicts between the inter-related
themes of housing and the environment?
* provide a way of guaranteeing that both housing rights and the
environmental rights are included in relevant future human rights
instruments?
* offer a new vision of a people centered and sustainable city,
permanently linking housing and the environmental rights?

/Defining Terms/

To a lawyer, the right to the city might be seen as consisting of a
hodgepdoge of existing human rights, viewed as one holistic unit. This
would constitute the bundle of entitlements included within this right.
Somewhat like systems theory in physics, the totality of the right to
the city would necessarily be greater than the mere sum of its parts.
Tehin lis its utility. These would include the following:

* the right to life and livelihood;
* the right to an adequate standard of living;
* the right to adequate housing (to a place to live in peace and
dignity);
* the right to choose one's residence;
* the right to freedom of movement;
* the right to be free from any form of discrimination, on the basis
of race, gender, or any other status including income level;
* the right to privacy;
* the right to work;
* the right to popular participation;
* the right to environmental hygiene;
* the right to health; and
* the special rights of women and children.

The denial of peoples' rights to the city in almost all cases results in
the direct negation of one or more of the rights comprising this larger
right. Still, while this may be one vision of the right to the city
defined in terms of human rights, this new right requires much greater
specificity and precision, because nowhere in the body of human rights
law now can we find and express mention of the right to the city. Why do
we need a right to the city and how could it assist in expanding statuos
qyo visions of human rights?

In practical terms, the right to the city would, among other things,
mean that:

* the poor, squatters, those inadequately housed and others would
have as much right to be in the city and be entitled to gain from
its benefits as anyone else;
* evictions justified in the name of beautifying the city, clearing
the pavements, protecting ecological zones, urban redevelopment,
to relieve overcrowding, etc. would be totally unacceptable;
* trucking people back to the countryside would be forbidden;
* currently labeled illegal settlements would be legalized,
including the provision of fully adequate forms of tenure security;
* everyone would be guaranteed the right to fully participate in any
and all decisions which affect them in the urban context -from
electing local politicians to influencing the planning process;
* the adequacy of living conditions and access to a certain level of
environmental quality wold not be roods reserved exclusively for
those affluent enough to afford them;
* land and public services would be provided to the poor;
* the informal sector as a whole would be recognized;
* public expenditures would be required to adequately address all
relevant urban issues and problems within the contet of human rights.


/Possible Counter Arguments to the Right to the City Idea/

There is a feeling within most law making bodies at the regional and
international levels that the days of standard-setting are coming to a
virtual end; emphasis needs to be applied instead to the enforcement and
realization of existing human rights. Although standard-setting will
never cease completely, this attitude will almost surely strike the
right to the city. In opposition to the idea, we might envision a number
of possible arguments which will need to be addressed by proponents of
the idea in a convincing fashion.

We might hear from those opposed to the idea that acceptance of a right
to the city:

* would encourage rural-urban migration to already overcrowded cities;
* would be discriminatory to the rural population, by placing unfair
emphasis or priority on the rights of urban dwellers;
* would limit the value of existing rights and in effect, decrease
their importance;
* would be too vague as to be worth anything within a legal context;
* would, even if accepted, be totally impossible to enforce;
* would result in further environmental degradation by aiming to
urbanize everything;
* would lead to an erosion of individual rights due to this right's
collective orientation;
* would be redundant, because it offers nothing new;
* would raise urban land prices so much as to negate any possible
gains that such a right could foreseeably bring...

These and doubtless other oppositional sentiments to the right to the
city will require attention for this right from the realms of words, to
law and deed.

/The utility of the Right to the City/

Pursuing claims based on an emerging right would only be worthwhile if
the proposed addition to the lawbooks has some form of legal or other
utilitarian function. This right must be clear for it to mean anything
in practical terms. Besides the human rights components of the right to
the city listed above, what other functions would this right have in
practice? We need to determine a few things:

* What kind of right are we talking about: a moral right, a natural
right, legal right or all three?
* To whom would this right apply: individuals, families,
communities, or all three?
* Would this be and enforceable human right or one designed to
purely encourage the Government to adopt appropriate policy and
legislation?
* Would this right, once accepted, really lead to the kind of
positive changes we want to see?
* Is our aim to create an entirely new ser of legal obligations for
the State or to give further impetus to enforcing existing and
directly relevant human rights?
* Could indicators be applied to measure compliance with the right
to the city, and if so, which ones?
* Can worldwide popular support be mobilized around this right?

The right to the city, I feel, is a useful and indeed imperative theme
to pursue -but not before as many answers as possible can be provided to
the many questions which continue to surround it. These are worth
addressing, for the right to the city could provide an important means
for refocusing attention, action and concern onto the phenomenal and
interconnected problems of housing an the environment affecting all of
our cities, as well as ensuring the practical and legal compatibility of
these realms of society.