The right to the city, the right to difference: Methods and strategies for local implementation

The “right to the city” calls on citizens to take collective ownership of their city and to shape its form and content through their everyday practices. It is about whom the city belongs to and how its development and future are decided. 

The implementation of the right to the city has proven a highly challenging task. Today´s urban societies are characterized by diversity, increasing polarization and often conflict. Incoming international "talent", the arrival of migrants and refugees, and the coexistence of different cultural communities and social-economic groups make cities places in which a broad range of actors coexist, but do not always interact. 

How can the right to the city (understood as the right to difference) become a reality in this context? How can it contribute to creating more socially cohesive cities that thrive on diversity? How can a city be the expression of social mixture? 

Since the late 1990s local governments from around the world have tried to respond to this challenge by developing rights-based policies that are being implemented via a wide range of mechanisms: municipal letters (Montreal, Vienna, Mexico City, Bandung), human rights councils and offices (Barcelona, Nuremberg, São Paulo, Venice), commissions (City of Mexico, Eugene, New York), strategic plans and roadmaps (Bogotá, Graz, Madrid), evaluation indicators (Gwangju, York), local ombudsmen (Montreal, Lleida, Vitoria-Gasteiz), municipal ordinances (Higashiosaka, Oizumi, Seoul), and public policies in areas including social welfare, housing, culture, education, environment and citizen participation, among others. 

After two decades of experiences with these various implementation mechanisms, the seminar seeks to take stock of their effectiveness. This exercise is particularly relevant in the current political climate in which xenophobic and populist discourses that demonize the “other” are on the rise.