David Harvey´s concept of Right to the City seems to be the foundation of Paisaje Transversal. In my previous post, I discussed how they collaborate with other social businesses in their field. I also touched upon organizations doing similar work in Madrid, and other cities. It is interesting to think of Right to the City as a global phenomenon, one that connects the challenges of urban dwellers everywhere. City life is made up of much more interactions with space and infrastructure — the constant circulation of people and confluence of cultures, ideas, and perspectives are what define the collective, human-centric urban experience. However, cities have also become the centers of global capital with economic agendas separate or sometimes in opposition to the needs of their citizenry. Harvey writes that a consequence of urbanization is the “processes of creative destruction that have dispossessed the masses of any right to the city.” I see Paisaje Transversal’s projects as efforts to return creative decision-making and problem solving to the people. They seek to offset traditional top-down power dynamics by pursuing bottom-up, community-based urban design strategies. By giving their time, energy, and funding to these type of goals, they are demanding “democratic control over the production and utilization of the surplus.”
In an interview this week, one of Paisaje’s members Iñaki Romero explained that it is difficult for businesses to engage in urban activism. Paisaje is a business, not a foundation nor an NGO.First and foremost, they must stay in afloat and this leaves little free time to directly partake in social movements or actively form coalitions with like-minded third-sector groups. He added that public money does not go to these type of partnerships or efforts to support community-based initiatives. Public money is used to provide quick fixes to more apparent problems such as homelessness, and to help the elderly population. Recently, Paisaje Transversal signed La Carta de Observatorio de Participación de Madrid with other experts participatory work. The agreement is to assess, critique, and improve the City Council’s approach to participatory projects.
While Paisaje Transversal operates as a business in many respects, they do redefine traditional concepts of ownership in the private sector. All of their methodologies are copy-left—anyone is free to implement them as long as they also share the strategies under copy-left. To me, this policy embodies Harvey’s thoughts in Right to the City. Ideas are shared as part of the public domain, and thus can be replicated for greater communal benefit. Copy-left prioritizes the potential impact of an idea rather than the potential profit.
Great! It would be really interesting to learn whether everyone is familiar with this term “Right to the City” and whether they have grappled with it at all. I wonder whether you can tell us more about La Carta and how it may exist in conversation with something like Harvey’s concept. Did you attend this talk (http://urbandemos.nyu.edu/video-the-right-to-the-city-as-human-right/) we did at the Lab last year? It’s a really interesting lecture in general, but the references the speaker, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, makes to international “right to the city” language is particularly instructive. Does Paisaje engage with this thinking?