Global Platform for the Right to the City sent, in last May, a letter to the representant of Habitat II Secretariat, Ana Moreno. The document is focused on the appointment of experts for Policy Units groups in the context of Habitat III Conference.
According to UN Habitat, the Policy Units are composed by 20 experts,including academia, government, civil society and other regional and international bodies. This preparatory process should mobilize all expertise on sustainable urban development which represents various constituent groups and stakeholders, with selection guided by geographical and gender balance, for example.
“The Platform aims to be a space for articulation, content production and for communication and dissemination of good practices, both in the study and research on the right to the city as well as in the implementation of policies that promote the right to the city”.
For the Plarform, the implementation of the Right to the City through those principles is crucial to promote a shift in the current urban development paradigm, in which prevails
the urban land market-value as it most important feature, the gentrification of traditional and popular neighborhoods, the privatization of collective spaces and criminalization and expulsion of large sectors of the population.
“The next two years will be key to strengthen the theme and to push forward this agenda internationally, mainly because we believe that the Right to the City must be the cornerstone of the New Urban Agenda, which will result from the definition of Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 and from the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in 2016.
