Global Platform for the Right to the City sent, in last May, a letter to
the representative
of Habitat III Secretariat, Ana Moreno. The document is focused on the
appointment of experts for Policy Units groups in the context of Habitat III
Conference.
According to UN Habitat, the Policy Units are composed by 20 experts, including
academia, government, civil society and other regional and international
bodies. This preparatory process should mobilize all expertise on sustainable
urban development which represents various constituent groups and stakeholders,
with selection guided by geographical and gender balance, for example.
“The Platform aims to be a space for articulation, content
production and for communication and dissemination of good practices, both in
the study and research on the right to the city as well as in the
implementation of policies that promote the right to the city”.
For the Platform, the implementation of the Right to the City
through those principles is crucial to promote a shift in the current urban
development paradigm, in which prevails the urban land market-value as it most
important feature, the gentrification of traditional and popular
neighborhoods, the privatization of collective spaces and criminalization and
expulsion of large sectors of the population.
“The
next two years will be key to strengthen the theme and to push forward this
agenda internationally, mainly because we believe that the Right to the City
must be the cornerstone of the New Urban Agenda, which will result from the
definition of Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 and from the United Nations
Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in 2016.