One form of right that is gaining traction in social policy is the idea of the ‘right to the city’. Although the more pervasive discourses on this concept are not
directly related to this research, the discussions around this term’s notion of the right to active participation provides useful parallels.
The right to the city concept as a political ideal (Harvey 2008) has been applied to many policy fields; it has been understood as the right of the homeless to occupy public space, the right of urban citizens to engage the urban planning process in non-trivial ways, and at its broadest, as a general right against urban policies that are seen to be either exclusionary, anti-democratic or that ban individuals or groups from participating in urban life (Attoh 2012). According to Mayer, it has been used as a slogan within several social protests and urban resistance movements (Mayer 2009) and in relation to social exclusion, Attoh
states that it has been looked at in terms of providing a possible way to mitigate social exclusion for the poor or welfare recipients (Attoh 2012).
Lefebvre first introduced the ‘right to the city’ as a concept in his book ‘Le Droit à la Ville’ (1968). He lamented that the ‘use value’ of the city, representing the benefits of urban living, was becoming less important in relation to the city’s ‘exchange value’ arising as a result of the commodification of urban assets and presented the right to the city as a possible way to reimagine urban spaces. His concept included two important tools to resist this change; the right to active participation in the politics, management and administration of the city, and the right to appropriation i.e. the right to access, occupy, create and use space (Dikeç 2001; Purcell 2002; Brown and Kristiansen 2009). His original concept has been further developed by various academics, most notably Harvey, Soja and Marcuse, but as Iveson writes the exact meaning of the concept remains contentious provocative and sketchy (Iveson 2011). Although arguably the second tool has been more deeply explored in the literature, the concept of the right to active participation in political life is directly relevant here.
For Harvey, the right to the city provides the opportunity to rethink and reshape our cities because it is ‘not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it [the city] after our heart's desire’ (Harvey 2003, p. 939).
Importantly, because the urban landscape is intrinsically linked to the
attainment of happiness and wellbeing, the right to the city also includes the reflexive idea of ‘the right to change ourselves by changing the city’ (Harvey 2008, p. 23). Parnell and Pietersee agree that ‘the right to the city is framed by a strong ethical base and (interlocking) actions to reduce inequality’ (Parnell
and Pieterse 2010, p. 149). It is therefore not a right in the sense of the right to education or to housing for example, but ‘an oppositional demand which
challenges the claims of the rich and powerful’ (Mayer 2009, p. 367).
Attempts have been made to operationalise the concept, and the right to the city has gained significant traction with international NGOs and organisations working in development. In 2003, international human rights groups together with UNESCO presented a Global Charter-Agenda for the Human Right to the City and in 2004 Habitat International Coalition presented a draft World Charter on the Right to the City at the Social Forum of the Americas in Quito and at the second World Urban Forum in Barcelona. The following year, at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, a draft ‘World Charter on the Right to the City’ was adopted attempting to combat social exclusion of all forms. This Charter defined the right to the city as ‘the equitable use of cities according to principles of sustainability, democracy, equity and social justice’ (UNHCR, 2015 p. 13). These various efforts and initiatives sought to develop a consensus on the implementation of the right into urban policies.
The right to the city as written in the text of the World Charter refers to other, more traditionally conceived, rights as part of ‘a bundle of already-existing human rights and related State obligations, to which, by extension, local authorities are also party’ (Mayer 2009, p. 368). Article 1 of the World Charter states that the right to the city;
‘assumes the inclusion of the rights to work in equitable and satisfactory conditions; to establish and affiliate with unions; to social
security, public health, clean drinking water, energy, public transportation, and other social services; to food, clothing, and
adequate shelter; to quality public education and to culture’ (HIC 2005)
The same Article also includes reference to rights to ‘information, political participation, peaceful coexistence, and access to justice; and the right to organize, gather, and manifest ones opinion’ therefore widening the list from those which could be said to be already in existence (HIC 2005). In line with Harvey’s assertion that the right to the city is a collective right, this World Charter states that it is the collective right of the ‘inhabitants of cities’; however some groups are highlighted as deserving particular protection ‘in particular of the vulnerable and marginalized groups’ (HIC 2005).
Perhaps more helpful than collating existing rights into one overall right, is to think of the concept as embodying a number of important themes. The UNESCO-UN-Habitat report on ‘Urban Policies and the Right to the City’ suggests themes of local democracy and urban governance, social inclusion and decent, dignified existence within cities, cultural diversity and religious freedoms, and rights to urban services (Brown and Kristiansen 2009). In terms of urban governance, which is perhaps the most relevant to this thesis, the paper refers to a UN-Habitat index of good urban governance that is built on measures of effectiveness, equity, participation and accountability. The report argues that in order to take forward the right to the city, urban governance has a crucial role in an implied contract between city governments and citizens
working to ‘ensure efficiency and equitable delivery of services and allocation of resources, particularly for disadvantaged people, the poor, elderly, or migrants’ (ibid, p. 36). This index would seem a useful tool through which to examine the activity of city governments trying to implement the right to the city. Dikeç
agrees that the governance of the city is the key to achieving a right to the city; he writes that ‘it is the urban political life which is to be changed, not the city per se’ and such a right should manifest itself as a way for citizens to ‘actively and collectively relate to the political life of the city’ (2001, p. 1790). He argues that the right to the city is not simply a right to urban space, as could be narrowly but incorrectly interpreted from Lefebvre’s writings, but to a political space via this ‘enabling right, to be defined and refined through political struggle’ (ibid).
In conclusion, the right to the city is not the ‘only game in town’ (Mayer 2010, p 362) for dealing with the injustices and inequalities present within cities and ‘raises more questions than its answers’ (Purcell, 2002 p103) but it marries a right to access the opportunities, commodities and facilities on offer in a city, with the right to participate in the decision-making processes that surround daily urban life. However, one important part of the right to the city is the reciprocal element of rights and responsibilities, i.e. citizens must claim these rights and respect those of others (UN-Habitat 2013). Although difficult to define and attempts to ‘systematically elaborate’ the term as Purcell suggests (2002, p100) have been criticised for not embracing the radical potential of the original
Lefebvrian ideal (e.g. Purcell 2002, Mayer 2009), the right to the city, and the interest that surrounds it both in academia and public policy, suggests that it can be an instrument for urban transformation.
Importantly the right to the city has been difficult to translate into specific action because it is a collective rather than an individual right, and has mainly
achieved traction in Latin America, particularly in Brazil through the Constitution and 2001 City Statue, in Ecuador through the 2008 Constitution, and the 2014
Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City (Brown 2013, HIC 2014). These formal mechanisms constituting a rights-based approach to governance are relatively rare, making Ecuador a particularly interesting case to study in this thesis.