Pulse - Spatial Justice

Grigny calls on local governments to commit for the right to peace and the right to the city

Grigny (28,424) | Right to Peace - Metropolization

Philippe Rio is the mayor of Grigny: A small town on the outskirts of Paris marked by strong inequalities. Philippe Rio's commitment to defend as Mayor social and spatial justice for city dwellers of peripheral cities has led him to become an active advocate of the right to the city in parallel to a vocal, global committment for the right to peace.

« Citizens in our cities are ready to engage in favor of peace. People want peace, but the big leaders of this world do not speak of peace: They speak of war! We must, according to the relation of proximity that we have to our citizens, be at the forefront of new alliances that reaffirm the will of our citizens to live in a peaceful world. There is a pacifist emergency, and local governments can be at the front of this appeal »

Philippe Rio, Mayor of Grigny

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Montevideo transforms abandoned properties into housing and habitat projects with a social function

Montevideo (1,3 million) | Right to Housing – Urban renewal

Montevideo "Fincas" project aims at recovering abandoned properties in central areas of the city in order to transform them into housing projects with a social function at the service of the common good. Fincas relies on consolidated mechanisms for multi-level cooperation.

« Through Fincas. Montevideo can advance towards a model of urban development with a human scale that poses alternatives to speculation, urban extractivism or predatory growth. It puts at the center of urban development people's needs and their right to the city »

Montevideo Department of Urban Development

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Móstoles is leading an ambitious strategy for the right to housing and the rights of homeless people

Móstoles (205,614) | Right to Housing - Homelessness

Móstoles, a working-class peripheral city, suffered harshly the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Faced with an unprecedented housing emergency and a hike in the number of evictions, the city set in motion a strategy to reverse the situation and protect the right to housing.

« We consider housing and unemployment as the two biggest problems of our society. As the situation has worsened in recent times due to the real estate bubble and the economic crisis, our city has put in place local mechanisms to protect the right to housing »

Gabriel Ortega, Deputy Mayor of Móstoles

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Goicoechea promotes human development through an approach based on citizen participation and human rights

Goicoechea (133,557) | Social Inclusion - Participatory Democracy

Initiatives led by Goicoechea's Human Development Department range from awareness-raising campaigns on non-discrimination, human rights trainings for local officials and participatory budgets; all set in a diverse and peripheral municipality of Costa Rica’s capital city.

« Among the specific initiatives carried out by the Department, the Tables for Dialogue stand out as a pioneer process on citizen participation. The tables aim at promoting people and community self-organization, and to co-create public policies through community workshops »

Goicoechea's Human Development Department

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Guaranteeing “a rooftop for everyone” in Plaine Commune: A working-class metropolitan territory

Plaine Commune (435,000) | Right to Housing - Right to the City

Throughout the last twenty years, Plaine Commune has transformed several of its industrial wastelands into new urban land and social housing promotions. Eradicating inadequate housing and fighting against speculation have been structuring axes of the territory’s strategy.

« Plaine Commune has constantly called for an urban policy that guarantees the "right to centrality" in the metropolitan area. This means that the people who live in our territory – and, in particular, in working-class households – must have access to all the city comforts and services as a right and without exclusion: this is the case, for example, of employment, transport or access to shops and business »

David Proult, Vice-President of Plaine Commune

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Montevideo works hand in hand with its citizens in order to guarantee the right to housing and to the city

Montevideo (1,3 million) | Right to Housing – Right to the City

Montevideo is widely recognized for its pioneer policies in the field of the right to housing and the housing cooperatives movement, which recently reached its half-century of history by securing a strengthened cooperation with the government of the city. We explore several of Montevideo’s housing policies through an interview with the city’s Urban Development Directress, Silvana Pissano

 « The issue of urban land is necessarily related to the Right to the City: providing existing vacant land at the center of Montevideo to those inhabitants that are willing to develop their own housing initiatives unfolds as a way to enable their access to the city resources and services that come with the land, such as transportation, water, sanitation and public space. This is essential for having an equal and democratic city »

Silvana Pissano, Urban Development Directress of Montevideo

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In Saillans, local democracy is built upon transparency, collegiality and citizen participation

Saillans (1,251) | Participatory Democracy

The small town of Saillans has been carrying out an innovative and relevant experience of local democracy and community self- organization since 2014. The Saillans experience is based on three intertwinned concepts: transparency, collegiality and citizen participation.

« For us, the big challenge of participation is to make it possible to reach out to those that are normally excluded from it. One advantage in our village was that we had the chance of review the local master plan, which gave citizens a much broader perspective on environmental issues, habitat and diversity »

Vincent Beillard, Mayor of Saillans