The GPR2C is proud to present the Policy Paper on the Right to the City it has been preparing for the 6th Congress of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) to take place along the World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders on 11-15 November 2019 in Durban, South Africa. The document is the result of coordinated efforts between the Platform and Habitat International Coalition with the coordination of Eva García Chueca (Scientific Coordinator,Global Cities Programme at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs)).
The GPR2C and the UCLG Congress
The policy paper will be the basis for the discussion on the Right to the City Town Hall, a session of the congress organized by the Platform on the 14th of November at 9:30h which aims to engage with local and regional governments constituency to jointly define policies for advancing on the implementation of the Right to the City at the local and regional levels, with specific policies and programs built around the eight components of the Right to the City.
This session is part of the Town Hall Track, one of the four axis of the Congress with the specific goal of fostering the dialogue and interaction between different internationally organized civil society and the political leadership of the local and regional governments constituency. The Town Hall is structured around 5 sessions with different themes: Accessible Cities; Addressing Informalities; Gender Equality; Right to the City, and Sustainable Urban Development, all of them organized by specific civil society organizations working on those themes. During the sessions, the policy recommendations presented on the policy papers prepared before the congress will be discussed in order to arrive to a pooling of recommendations that will be presented to the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments.
The policy paper on the Right to the City
The document prepared by the GPR2C focuses on asseritng that to implement the SDG´s in their totality it is fundamental to apply the Right to the City framework. This is because the Right to the City envisions the effective fulfillment of all internationally agreed Human Rights and Sustainable Development Goals, while dealing specifically with a dimension of urban problems that classic human rights’ standards do not tackle: namely, spatial exclusion, its causes and consequences. At the same time, it provides a territorial approach that can enhance policy pertinence and coherence.
The paper indentifies five main challenges for the fulfillment of the Right to the city: Financialization of cities, gentrification and housing crisis; the Rural-Urban Divide; Territorial and social inequities; the Democratic backsliding and human rights curtailment and the migration crisis. Then it sets a series of policy recommendations with concrete actions built around the eight components of the Right to the City and its links to Global Agendas such as the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda.
You can read the Policy Paper in full here.
Here you may find more information on the UCLG Congress and the activities organized by the Platform.
We hope to see you there!
