Do We Have a Right to the City?
Mexico City's experience shows that you can’t establish a “right to the city” without taking on the power of capital.
The right to the city is like a cry and a demand,” Henri Lefebvre wrote in 1967. “A transformed and renewed right to urban life.”
This is a cry and demand today heard worldwide. From a slogan among Situationists in 1968 to the central theme of the United Nations Habitat II conference three decades later, the “right to the city” has grown into a global catchphrase, tossed around by activists and policymakers alike. Its appeal is intuitive, its meaning elastic. “A dignified and secure existence in cities,” according to the UN. “A right to change ourselves by changing the city,” according to David Harvey.
Mexico City is one of the only places in the world where the effort to implement the right to the city is underway. In 2010, the Mexico City government passed the Right to the City charter, an ostensibly radical vision for the city’s future.
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