Promoting diversity: The Right to the City: fighting against urban inequalities 3 October, 2013

Transcription

1 Promoting diversity: The Right to the City: fighting against urban inequalities 3 October, 2013 For a growth of the Right to the City at municipal level: between programmatic documents and concrete practices Giovanni Allegretti (CES, Coimbra, Portugal)

2 There are many many policies which are able to better the quality of life of citizens but how many of them are micro-fragmented actions, compatible with a neoliberal mainstream which in the best case value individual rights, without even trying to challenge the prevalent idea of the inevitability of the market as a dominant factor?

3 AT CISDP_DH, we believe that THE RIGHT TO THE CITY IS A RADICALIZATION OF STRUGGLES for different and more holistic visions of rights

4 Joan Subirats, 2007 Incidence The project: how to grant its effectiveness? + Resistance Protest, occupations and other examples of «participation by irruption» Conflict line Dissidence Creates new imaginary with personal sufferance of actors

5 WHY CHARTERS and PROGRAMMATIC DOCUMENTS? Several Documents of Council of Europe The Charter of Local and Regional Autonomy 1985; the Agreement on Foreigners Participation in Local Public Life 1997; the European Urban Charter ; the European Urban Charter II Manifesto for a New Urbanity 2008; the additional Protocol on the Right to Participation in decision-making 2009 The World Charter of the Right to the City (2005) The European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights IN the City 2000 The Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City (2011)

6 Because they gradually help to build an evolutionary vision of a Right which is just not the SUM OF INDIVIDUAL civil/political rights, but face collective challenges (i.e. in the environmental domain, the land rights to grant security of tenure) putting at the center a more organicist vision of the City and a real fulfillment of the social function of the City, including private property, remarking the separation between IUS SOLI and IUS AEDIFICANDI. A devil s advocate would say: Because they are symbolic moments of a commitment, and so they clean the consciousness and clean the image of a local authority with a reduced effort (not having real sanctions) Movement must fight to conquer concretely this umbrella right and monitoring mechanism have starting to be put in place (as Saint Denis biennial conference) to assess progressions

7 A line of evolution in the last charters on the Right-to-the-City (or urban rights?) to FOCUS on a main level of central struggles THE CHARTER AGENDA IS MORE SUPPORTIVE IN OFFERING EXAMPLES of PIVOTAL ACTIONS. It has a growing focus on the connections between the built-compact space of cities and their connections with open-space/countryside; the growth of importance of CULTURE; a gradual reduction of EUROCENTRISM and WESTERN-CENTRISM (introducing different cosmogonies); a growing emphasis on INTERMUNICIPAL STRUGGLES

8 This evolution explain the COMPLEMEN- TARY TOOL put in place in the last 3 years, to involve cities, regions and MILITANT RESEARCH to point out some directions through examples that take into account with RESPECT the PATH- DEPENDENCY of every experiment, and trying to connect them in a system

9 AGAINST THE IDEA OF INEVITABILITY OF MARKET MECHANISMS DEFENDING PEOPLE FROM MARKET AGRESSIONS OTAINSA (Seville) - Oficina Técnica de Asesoramiento al Inquilino en Situación de Abuso A Municipal Observatory fighting against the white evictions of elderly people, apparently choosing to sell their apartments in the historic center, but blackmailed by enterprises which forced them to sell, after having bought the entire building and left it in unlivable conditions of maintenance TRY TO REGULATE PRIVATE MARKET Through thematic FAIRS with established maximum prices for specific products, in order to challenge the private market to apply similar discounts The Municipality entered with trials against the enterprises, obliging them to fulfill their maintenance tasks for granting public security

10 DEFENDING PUBLIC SPACES as COMMONS

11 MAKING THE SOCIAL FUNCTION of LAND REAL, through avoiding a simplistic individual-based vision of housing and land-rights. The case of Brazilian experiments of taxes on land which grow in time when an area does not fulfill its social function

12 A community land trust is a nonprofit corporation that develops and stewards affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces and other community assets on behalf of a community. It balance the needs of individuals to access land and maintain security of tenure with a community s need to maintain affordability, economic diversity and local access to essential services.

13 TRANSCALARITY and MUTUAL INFLUENCE

14 Interesting experiences on apparently - minor issues of the Charter of The Right to The City : AT STATE LEVEL: Valorization of Traditional Justice and Legal pluralism in the Law (Bolivia) AT LOCAL LEVEL: CIC (Centros Integrados de cidadania) Democratizing Police Force : Courses on Human Rights or on Migrants Rights (ACIDI in Lisbon; adoption of methods of storytelling ) Defense and valorization of urban memory: historiadores de la ciudad in Cuba

15 CELEBRATING CHALLENGING MARRIAGES How is possible to work together on very modern binomials as: 1) AUSTERITY/SUSTAINABILITY 2) FREE TRANSPORTATION/ ECOLOGIC TRANSPORTATION So valuing the opportunities offered by FINANCIAL and OIL crises?

16 MEASURING WITH PARTICIPATORILY-DONE MEANINGFUL INDICATORS

17 THE BELO HORIZONTE S IQVU (Indice of Quality of Life) is not only useful to measure social polarization, but it contributes to solve distributive injustice, giving more resources to most vulnerable areas

18 Creating mixed Observatories for implementation of Human Rights in the City/and single components of the Right to the City

19 CONSTANTLY MONITORING THE RISK OF A DOUBLE EXCLUSION in the advocacy methods of participation?

20 I CLOSE WITH A LAST STUDY THAT UCLG has been involved with (not only as commission, but as OIDP/CISDP-DH and other Commissions), that on Community Based Monitoring. The idea was to study a methodology, but it emerged clear, in the end, the need of a Charter to clarify potentials far-beyond the present experiences, cross-pollinating and hybridizing with other participatory methods to take real commitments on HOW TO USE THEM properly as a political challenge and NOT JUST IN A MINIMALIST interpretation

21 Thanks/merci/gracias/ grazie/danke/obrigado. (questions are very much welcome)