




A transformative approach for our urban world
In 2050, a 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities. In the next 30 years, more than 2 billion people will settle in urban areas, especially in the world's largest metropolis. In a world where 1% of the population owns 50% of the world’s wealth, urban areas would concentrate unsustainable inequalities.
This reality raises many questions that will shape the future of our urban planet: How to build cities for all, without banishing millions of the world’s poorest to the social and spatial margins of the city? How to turn cities into places where people can live a decent life and where opportunities to thrive are effectively accessible for all inhabitants? How can local governments take advantage of their responsibilities in order to implement human rights related to education, health, an enjoyable environment, employment, participation, culture, or even to security? How to ensure access to public services and improve urban mobility? How to promote intercultural and intergenerational cities without discrimination within which each and all inhabitants can find their place?
Member local governments of the UCLG CSIPDHR have mobilized since 2004 in order to collectively promote inclusive, democratic and sustainable cities, where the human rights of all are guaranteed. By the time of the Habitat III, aware of the new phase of global urbanization, those governments wanted to propose the Right to the City as a possible and concrete alternative, with a focus on collective well-being, rather than an urban development model focused exclusively on economic growth.
Proposed Guidelines of the Right to the City
The Right to the City is a collective right of each and every inhabitant, where the territory of the cities and their surroundings (in an equitable relationship with the rural world) are considered areas of exercise and guarantee of human rights. This helps to ensure an equitable, universal, just, democratic and sustainable distribution and enjoyment of the available resources, wealth, services, assets and opportunities offered by cities. Thus, a possible approach to the Right to the City would propose: