'City' and 'human rights' in a pot : impacts, opportunities and challenges of the multi-actor structure of 'the right to the city'

Abstract

The Right to the City is a complex term to understand and realize in terms of its content, context and implications. The Right to the City is a claim for an ideal that does not exist today. This claim refers to a unitary, collective, and diffuse right to include all rights and full exercise of them in a socially just, inclusive, democratic, and sustainable city. This thesis is going to provide an analytical analysis and comparison of key actors who take place in the Right to the City issue by examining comparatively their impacts, opportunities and challenges in order to clarify complexity of this structure, including conceptualization and efforts in different levels by human rights and democratization context. This thesis is based on the argument that using and conceptualizing the term ‘’Right to the City’’ from different perspectives that belong to actors in different scales such as supranational, international, regional, national and local institutions/governmental bodies/NGO’s/social movements creates an ambiguity. Main findings of this thesis are as of the following: the Right to the City and Human Rights Cities are closely related to each other. On the other hand, there are certain differences in between conceptualization of right(s) and city affiliations of them. The Right to the City is exercised with its original notion in the Global South by predominantly urban social movements, especially in Latin American countries. Whereas, Human Rights Cities are more widespread and convenient to the European context of urban life in which human rights are exercised and protected by local administrative units. It clarifies the distinction between two different understandings of the Right to the City and Human Rights Cities because of the fact that they have sui generis historical, political, economic, social, environmental and urban spatial backgrounds. Key words: the right to the city, human rights cities, collective right, democratic cities, social justice, and sustainable cities