Anamika Jain
Instituto Pólis
São Paulo, Brazil
The past month in São Paulo has been a whirlwind of experiences. I came here to explore gentrification, but it seems I am now becoming a semi-expert in several areas of ‘Right to the City’ since even one branch of gentrification is deeply entangled with the others.
My official internship with Instituto Polis requires me to do research on good examples of right to the city in cities across the globe to be used as a persuasive document in the UN Habitat III conference in October in Ecuador. My purpose is to convince other countries that implementing right to the city is easy, cost-efficient, effective and productive. This research process is challenging as much as gratifying. I truly believe that in doing this research, I am learning not just more about the world’s cities but also more about practical uses of right to the city and it’s links to issues of politics, war, economy, society, sexism and environmentalism, just to name a few.
‘Right to the City,’ a concept developed by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book, Le Droit à la Ville, is defined by Polis as “the right of all inhabitants, present and future, permanent and temporary to use, occupy and produce just, inclusive and sustainable cities, defined as a common good essential to a full and decent life.” Polis classifies the right as both a collective and a diffuse right: as a collective right it pertains to the diversity of all inhabitants on the basis of their common interest; as a diffuse right, the right to the city belongs to present and future generations and is indivisible and not subject to exclusive use or appropriation. This diffuse right is interesting to me because unlike the collective right, I could not figure out what exactly its legal basis was until I asked a Brazilian friend and law student, who told me that this kind of right was common and known in the Brazilian context but not so much elsewhere. Thus, a lot of my work, guided primarily by Polis documents, has a Brazilian understanding of the right.
The challenging part about this job is not just the research, but learning the politics of writing an official document; I cannot explicitly criticize or highlight problems that I identify with the examples I am giving from my research since my purpose is to convince states to implement right to the city. Nevertheless, I am thoroughly enjoying the research I am doing and the guidance I have received from my supervisor Rodrigo at Polis has helped me a lot in the initial stages of thinking about how to approach and structure official documents. Rodrigo has also provided me with some official documents and books that have been invaluable in supporting my research and have taught me a lot about right to the city and its connections with gentrification.
All in all, this internship is proving incredibly rewarding and I am so excited to produce a high quality document that encourages cities to implement right to the city. My passion driving my will to produce good work lies in the knowledge that by implementing right to the city, so many other fundamental human rights are supported and promoted. Hopefully this passion translates into a convincing text!