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Are you interested in the right to the city?

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Our summary today works with the article titled Human rights and the city: Including marginalised communities in urban development and smart cities from 2019 by Tina Kempin Reuter, published in the Journal of Human Rights. This is a great preparation to our next interviewee in episode 147, Damian Hewitt, where we talk a lot about the need to include the marginalised groups into city development. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see what the right to the city means. This article focuses on the questions of how to build inclusive, fair and accessible cities and how to eliminate inequalities seen in urban communities.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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Cities are spaces in which large numbers of people live in close proximity to and association with one another. Organising this dynamic human space, enabling people from diverse backgrounds to live together, addressing the spatial and social challenges of urban life, and delivering services to inhabitants are enormous tasks cities face today. Many hope for cities to deliver where nation states have failed and see cities as centres for human development, social justice and policy innovation. Cities have become important hubs for human rights activity and serve as key actors shaping implementing and monitoring policies dealing with human rights and social justice. This article aims to evaluate the trend of localisation in human rights as it applies to cities.

Two questions are investigated: 1. If we consider human rights to be the basis of how we approach urban development, how do we produce spaces that reflect fundamental human rights values such as nondiscrimination, equality and access for all? 2. How can we ensure that all city inhabitants take part and are represented in the modern urban discourse? The New Urban Agenda and its vision expressed the need to build inclusive cities that ensure that all inhabitants, of present and future generations, without discrimination of any kind, are able to inhabit and produce just, safe, healthy, accessible, affordable, resilient, and sustainable cities. This aim catapulted these questions to the forefront of the urban conversation. Thus, this article investigates these questions from the perspective of people with disabilities, one of the most marginalised communities across the globe.

The localisation of human rights is a relatively new trend with two distinct narratives. First, rights in the city focuses on human rights implementation in cities. Second the right to the city calls for all inhabitants to be able to fully enjoy and contribute to the city life with all of its services and advantages. These two narratives are often used interchangeably. And both of them developed as a response to the perception that cities have become disconnected from the people who inhabit them, that urban spaces have become abstract and that city governments do not adequately involve urban dwellers in their decision-making processes, urban planning and service allocation.

One of the key questions relating to the right to the city is whose right is the right to the city? Although a human rights approach would dictate that the right to the city belongs to all urban inhabitants, the reality is that the impact of individuals on urban development and urban planning often depends on their income and educational level, where in the city they live, and their status in society. Marginalised communities are often excluded from the urban discourse and do not enjoy the right to the city. Regarding people with disabilities, inaccessible sidewalks, buildings, parks, and public transportation systems are only the most visible problems. Other urban infrastructure, like information systems, websites, early warning systems and decision-making processes often exclude access for persons with disabilities. The challenge today is to build cities that are inclusive of all groups and accessible to everyone based on the ideas of right to the city and human rights documents.

Practitioners, activists and researchers agree that technology, especially ICT and mobile technology can alleviate some of the issues. There is no doubt that ICT can help people with disabilities with video sign language interpretation, captioning, telehealth and e-governance. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality and sensors are seen as tools to remove barriers and escape isolation and enable communication for people with disabilities. On the other hand, these technologies have to be available and accessible in use and affordability, for example, for these people as well, because accessibility and inclusion are often an afterthought in product planning and policy making.

Unfortunately, much of the current smart city agenda does not seem to acknowledge the fact that in the end, the city is made up of humans. Advocates of smart cities fail to address the complexity and sociality of cities, and smart cities are by definition not human friendly or empowering to inhabitants. Technological solutions are top-down and inhabitants become merely consumers or living sensors providing data. Citizens are often seen as obstacles and in need of ICT education. Smart cities, in this sense, can amplify the perception that cities are productions of corporate-government-financial bureaucracies, not by people who inhabit them. Additionally, most city planners, policymakers, urban designers, engineers, and ICT developers are unaware of accessibility standards and the needs of underrepresented groups

Successful smart cities have to start with people and involve a human-centred bottom-up approach. The first step is to acknowledge that smartness also comes from social indicators, not just technology. Human rights in the city and the right to the city can provide the needed frameworks to address social sustainability and inclusion in smart cities. The stakeholders must include citizens and civil society actors. Based on the social model of disability, a human rights approach puts the individual at the centre of attention, leading to greater understanding and empowerment of fundamental human rights concepts, such as human dignity. Local governments and policy makers play an important role in facilitating the citizen-driven urban design process due to the provided governance framework in which the dialogue happens. The last set of actors in the multi-stakeholder model includes members of the ICT industry and academia to provide technologies, tools and scientific methodologies to make an inclusive urban design process a reality.

Cities substantially impact human rights implementation through human rights-centred initiatives and policies especially with regard to political participation, education, health and social welfare. Today technological solutions are often looked to as ways to address social, economic, and political issues. Urban planners, city governments and engineer have embraced this by creating the smart city. However, technology alone is not sufficient to solve all problems. Without consideration for all inhabitants, smart city and technological approaches have the potential to exacerbate socio-economic divisions and exclusion through corporate dominance and top-down implementation. The first step in creating inclusive cities involves including stakeholders in all parts of the planning process, reaching out to marginalised communities, and seeking diverse participation.

To achieve a human-centred modern urban environment, cities need to involve marginalised communities, like people with disabilities, in urban planning, train the industry and policy-makers about the needs of marginalised communities and engage them actively in product development, design solutions, and problem solving. Thus, cities can gain new knowledge and insights and become hubs of innovation, sites for new markets and models for other cities in the world. Cities will become key actors in the promotion, protection and implementation of human rights.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. The localisation of human rights is a relatively new trend with two distinct narratives: first, rights in the city focuses on human rights implementation in cities, second the right to the city calls for all inhabitants to be able to fully enjoy and contribute to the city life with all of its services and advantages.
2. To achieve a human-centred modern urban environment, cities need to involve marginalised communities, like people with disabilities, in urban planning, train the industry and policy-makers about the needs of marginalised communities and engage them actively in product development, design solutions, and problem solving.
3. Cities can gain new knowledge and insights and become hubs of innovation, sites for new markets and models for other cities in the world and thus they will become key actors in the promotion, protection and implementation of human rights.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What do you think about the representation of human rights in your city?
2. What do you think about your right to the city?
3. How can your city improve the human rights and the right to the city?
4. How can you help your city to improve these rights?

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