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Articles on Right to the city

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One of the entry points to San Roque, with a makeshift guard shelter on the left. Kim Dovey

‘Forced’ evictions eat away at a Manila community as developer spares the golf course next door

Besides battling the coronavirus pandemic, San Roque residents have long been locked in a bigger struggle for their very survival as a community in the face of home demolitions and relocations.
The Bangladesh government wants Karail, an established community of 200,000 people in the capital Dhaka, to make way for development. Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World/flickr

What sort of ‘development’ has no place for a billion slum dwellers?

A community of 200,000 in Dhaka faces eviction to make room for “development”. Is it time to rethink the concept, especially with a billion people now living in informal settlements worldwide?
Homeless residents of El Bronx embrace after a May 2016 raid that displaced thousands, sending some to shelters and others to streets elsewhere in the city. Fernando Vergara/AP

Who are the real targets of Bogota’s crackdown on crime?

Bogota’s mayor wants to make the city ‘better for all,’ but repeated police crackdowns have displaced thousands of homeless Colombians. Are clean streets really more important than human rights?
When the smart city looks inhuman: a robot police officer from Dubai greets guests at last November’s Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. Ramon Costa/AAP

Creative city, smart city … whose city is it?

The corporate world has taken the lead in promoting various creative/smart city visions, which struggle to be inclusive, let alone entrust citizens with control over their lives.
Joan Clos (right) shows visiting dignitaries around the UN complex in Nairobi, Kenya, which as host of UN-Habitat headquarters was pushing one of two competing proposals for implementation responsibilities. Noor Khamis/Reuters

Phew! New Urban Agenda clears last hurdle before Habitat III

Two years of marathon negotiations have finally yielded agreement in last-minute meetings in New York on the New Urban Agenda to be adopted at the Habitat III summit in Quito in October.
As machinery demolishes houses behind them, Jakarta police evict residents from the settlement of Luar Batang in April. Reuters/Beawiharta Beawiharta

Will Habitat III defend the human right to the city?

The world’s informal settlements are growing at an unprecedented rate, with about one in four urban dwellers living in slums. We need to rethink how we view and deal with these people and places.
When public housing like the properties in Sydney’s Millers Point is privatised, it profoundly changes the social mix of the inner city to something much more homogenous. AAP/Newzulu/Peter Boyle

Suburbanising the centre: the Baird government’s anti-urban agenda for Sydney

The NSW government agenda would deny the ‘right to the city’, that network of diverse communities, practices and places which give rise to the convivial and inclusive potential of cities.

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