Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1
the regularization of informal settlements or
favelas
enabling residents to access
basic urban services through the promotion of land tenure;
2
the social function or use value of urban land that recognizes land, space, as
something more than a site for accumulating economic value thereby recognizing
the cultural, social and environmental interests of groups other than those of
property owners;
3
the democratization of urban land which in many instances relates to processes
of participatory budgeting or the establishment of neighbourhood councils where
citizens, rather than elites, decide for themselves directly how public money
should be spent.
For this City Statute to exist in a practical and meaningful way requires constant
political and social engagement. Groups and individuals need to be mindful of
mobilizing around their specific interests but recognizing the need for commonality
or equivalence. Each group - whether they are young people, the elderly, women,
the homeless, small business people, and even wildlife - have an equivalent right to
inhabit the city in a way that enables all to benefit and prosper fairly and equitably.
Thus, the right to the city is a linchpin concept linking the interests of many different
groups to the wider socio-political and ecological environment. However, as Fernandes
notes:
The increased politicization of urban law has made room for broader popular
participation in the defence of social interests and collective rights, but for the
same reason the enactment and enforcement of new urban laws and programmes
have faced increasing resistance on the part of conservative interests and some
serious backlashes have been verified. . . .
In this context, the materialization of the possibilities of the new legal-urban
order will depend on several factors, but above all on the renewed social
mobilization in urban areas. In the last analysis, the future of the new law will
fundamentally depend on the wide mobilization of Brazilian society, within and
without the State apparatus, so as to materialize Lefebvre's long claimed 'right
to the city'.
(2006: 51)
Global civil society and world civic politics
The last few decades have seen the growth of a number of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid,
Amnesty International and Oxfam, and social movements, such as feminism, environ-
mentalism, anti-poverty and anti-globalization, whose activities and influence on
international politics, intergovernmental agencies and national governments have
been significant in promoting a globalized ecological sensibility, through animating
sustainable values and practices. Many of the new social movements and global civil
society organizations have developed in opposition to the work of the World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Economic Forum, the World
Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union and the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD), which have been perceived as insensitively,
and unnecessarily, forcing neoliberalist policies and practices on developing nations.
