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| Urban Policies |
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| A number of initiatives have been carried out at various levels towards promoting a rights-based approach and ensuring the 'Right to the City' for all urban dwellers. At the national level, there is an increasing pressure to empower municipal authorities to contribute to local and global sustainable development. The primary objective of a city is viewed as one of fulfilling a social function and, in pursuit of sustainability and social justice, guaranteeing equitable access to all to the opportunities it has to offer. For this reason UN-HABITAT and UNESCO joined efforts in launching international comparative research together with international NGOs. |
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"A citizen was originally a person who had the right to live in a city and who, by exercising rights and fulfilling duties like every other citizen, helped build a civilization," Federico Mayor, Editorial of the Unesco Courrier, June 1999.
By the ‘Right to the City’ are meant a series of legitimate claims to the necessary conditions of a satisfying, dignified and secure existence in cities by both individual citizens and social groups. Throughout the year 2005 a group of international experts discussed the concept 'Right to the City' during various international meetings organized by UNESCO, UN-Habitat and International NGOs in UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, Barcelona Municipalities, Vancouver (2006) and Porto Alegre (2008).
On 18 March 2005, UN-HABITAT and UNESCO signed a Memorandum of Understanding in order to reinforce their collaboration on specific topics and common interests like the concept ‘Right to the City’. The two specialised UN-organisations – in association with International NGOs - jointly organized meetings on “Urban Policies and the 'Right to the City'. International experts attending these debates applied the notion of the ‘Right to the City’ to various local and contemporary cases. The Second Meeting of the UNESCO/UN HABITAT/IAEC Working Group on 'Urban Policies and the Right to the City’ took place at Barcelona’s Municipality (27-29 March 2006). UNESCO and UN-HABITAT organized the Third Meeting of the Working Group on “Urban Policies and the Right to the City” at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, from 11 to 12 December 2006. The Fourth meeting was hosted in February 2008 during Porto Alegre's World Conference on Inclusive Cities for the 21st Century.
A number of initiatives have been carried out at various levels towards promoting a rights-based approach and ensuring the 'Right to the City' for all urban dwellers. At the national level, there is an increasing pressure to empower municipal authorities to contribute to local and global sustainable development. The primary objective of a city is viewed as one of fulfilling a social function and, in pursuit of sustainability and social justice, guaranteeing equitable access to all to the opportunities it has to offer.
There have been encouraging initiatives such as the 'International Charter for Educating Cities' (2001), the ‘European Charter for Safeguarding Human Rights in the City’ (2003) and the 'European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in local life' (May 2006), ‘The City Statute’ of Brazil (2001), ‘The Montréal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities’ (2006) or an international NGOs project of a ‘World Charter on the Right to the City’.
The cities of Barcelona (Spain) and Nantes (France) have been working on a 'World Charter for Safeguarding Human Rights in the City' within the World Forum of Human Rights. However, there is not yet an international consolidated approach to inclusive urban legislation and governance: .
For this reason UN-HABITAT and UNESCO joined efforts to launch international comparative research together with international cities’ NGOs like AIVE, Metropolis, and others, in view of forging consensus among all key actors, and local authorities in particular, on the constituent elements of public policy and legislation that combine urban development with social equity and justice.
To stimulate the development of international comparative research on this issue, an international Working Group and a UNESCO Chair have been established.
Related Links:- UNESCO Chair on ‘Urban Policies and Citizenship’, University of Lyon, France
- World Urban Forum, (UN-HABITAT website)
- e-Debate on Taking Forward the Right to the City, 23 November - 18 December 2009, run by UN-Habitat as a platform for discussing the ‘right to the city’ at the World Urban Forum 5 in March 2010
- Urban Policies and the Right to the City: Rights, responsibilities and citizenship’, A. Brown and A. Kristiansen, UNESCO, 2008 [PDF, 3.2 MB]
- Speech of Mr Wataru Iwamoto former Director for the Division of Social Sciences, Research and Policy, UNESCO, at the second UN-HABITAT/UNESCO/ISSC Working Meeting on “Links between Urban Policies and the Right to the City”, 27-28 March 2006 [PDF, 23 KB]
- • International Public Debates: Urban Policies and the Right to the City, UNESCO, 2005 [PDF, 5.7 MB]
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