Alison Handel
Instituto Pólis
São Paulo, Brazil
There is often a fear in the back of every intern’s head before they start work and it goes a little something like this: Am I just going to be getting coffee and making copies? This fear is not unreasonable. A lot of interns find themselves in this situation, but thankfully this fear has been unfounded during our time thus far at Instituto Pólis.
The main focus of our work at the Instituto is preparing for Habitat III. Habitat III is the name of the third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development. Pólis, and many organizations like it, are naturally eager for their concerns to be addressed and Pólis is vying for the Right to the City agenda to be a key point. The Right to the City movement aims for the adoption of commitments, policies, projects and actions aimed at developing fair, democratic and sustainable cities. But with so many organizations jockeying for a seat at the table, there is a need to distinguish ourselves.
Pólis is in the process of preparing a document that will outline the benefits that a Right to the City approach in urban development can have. They plan to do this by highlighting real world examples and success stories. My research partner, Anamika, is assigned to research international examples of this. My focus is on the Brazilian, and specifically, the São Paulo context.
The São Paulo city government has several secretariats within it, including a Human Rights and Citizenship Secretariat, which as a department dedicated to the promotion of the Right to the City. This was a huge victory for Right to the City advocates who have been pushing for a materialization of their agenda for years. The department has strongly supported public space occupation by all types of people to strengthen a wider sense of belonging to the city.
To end on a personal note, I really feel like I am doing something important and am assisting in making an impact. There’s a tendency for interns to feel like cogs in giant machines, but thankfully that isn’t the case for us. We are doing a lot and learning even more in the process. This definitely hasn’t been the typical internship and we definitely are not doing typical intern work. We are breathing rarified air.