The Global Platform for the Right to the City (GPR2C) has embarked on a collective learning process, with two stages: in 2020 and 2021. This process is being carried out together with all its members and allies for the elaboration of a series of thematic papers to explore and deepen into the key conceptual and programmatic contents related to the Right to the City. These documents are intended to strengthen the advocacy, training, networking, and communication work of the GPR2C
To learn more about the 2020 process, click here.
To learn more about the 2021 process, click here.
The result is seven thematic documents focused on the Right to the City components:
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Right to the City: A Roadmap for Climate Justice
This paper, written by our consultant Álvaro Puertas Robina, former Habitat International Coalition Secretary-General, sheds light on the potential of the Right to the City as “one of the reference frameworks to guide equitable Climate Action and to jointly create practical agendas to mitigate Climate Change, adapt to its impacts, and guarantee the restitution of rights lost in the past while preserving those rights for future generations”. |
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The impact of COVID-19 on the Right to the City
This Thematic Paper, written by our consultant Eva García Chueca, CIDOB, aims to be useful to a variety of stakeholders (civil society, governmental institutions, the private sector, academia, etc.) in their efforts to Build Back Better cities and human settlements in post-pandemic times, by using the Right to the City as a guide for change. |
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The City as a Common Good: A Pillar of the Right to the City
This paper explores the notion of the city as a common good, one of the components of the Right to the City, from a sociolegal perspective. It aims to raise, and address in basic terms, three main questions, namely: how to give a more concrete legal meaning to the Right to the City?; what should a contemporary, sociolegal take on the notion of the city as a common good be like?; and how can a land and territorial governance framework give a legal meaning to the notion of the city as common good? |
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Inclusive Citizenship in Cities and Human Settlements
This Thematic paper aims to shed light on the potential and need for alternative forms of citizenship. Formal citizenship fosters a narrative of universalism, that all citizens have equal rights and obligations, but citizenship is “differentially experienced” by women, men, elders, youngsters, racialized persons, indigenous peoples, LGTBQIA+ communities, migrants… We sense an urgent need for going beyond the traditional top-down and state-centric perspective of citizenship, as citizenship should not be an instrument for exclusion but an including one. |
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Cities and Human Settlements Free From Discrimination
The aim of this thematic paper is to contribute an improvement to the implementation of the right to the city through some conceptual clarification and practical examples and practices in the non-discri¬mination field. Some of them are cases brought forward to the International Human Rights System, with specific recommendations for governments. Others are experiences from different cities around the world, trying to address the oppression of certain groups inside their territory. |
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Cities and Human Settlements with Quality Public Spaces
This paper explores the complexity of public space across different dimensions: urban, cultural, artistic and performative, political, environmental, and virtual. Public space is not simply a well-designed physical space for public enjoyment; it is primarily a way of re-thinking cities and human settlements so that they can powerfully contribute to the effective implementation of the main pillars of the right to the city. |
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Beyond urban-rural linkages, the defense of territories and cities for life
This paper introduces a reflection on what is the potential of strengthened urban-rural linkages to advance the Right to The City. The text analyzes the relevance of this discussion based on the current context, linking it with the wider theory and debate around the Right to the City and Human Rights and then citing examples of alternative, more equitable and balanced approaches for acting in territories, with a special focus on the social and environmental function of territory and the equitable distribution of burdens and benefits of economic processes generated in said territories. |
