The Right to The City has been one of the most influential thoughts in citymaking.

This ‘right to change ourselves by changing the city’ (Harvey, 2008) aims to “rescue the citizen as main element and protagonist of the city that he himself had built” and to transform urban space into “a meeting point for building collective life” (Lefebvre, 1968). To build a city for the many, not the few.

From the coining of the right in Henri Lefebvre’s influential ‘Le droit à la ville’ (1968) to the protest signs of urban movements around the world and its adoption into the United Nations New Urban Agenda (2016) – the concept has inspired public, private and civic actors in rethinking and reacting upon increasingly unequal urbanities.

But what legal rights are there that support our actual right to the city? We invite two legal experts to explain the role of the law in claiming the right to the city.

Speakers

→ Prof. Dr. Esther van Zimmeren
Esther is founder of the Metropolitan Legal Lab and Associate Professor in Law of the University of Antwerp where she, amongst others, teaches ‘The Inclusive and Sustainable City & Law’. She will focus on the urbanization of law and highlight some cases of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ related to participation in urban development, wheelchair users, smart city data and more.

→ Steven Gibens (Helder Recht)
Steven is the co-founder and coordinator of Helder Recht, an NGO that aims to demistify, communicate and develop digital and social solutions for the accessibility of law in the fields of housing, work, social security and beyond. He will be uncovering how his practice works on helping urbanites (re)claim their rights, including their right to the city.

→ Luis Galàn (Zuloark, Madrid)

Luis is part of Zuloark, a distributed architecture platform currently based in La Coruña, Berlin, Bologna and Madrid. He will talk about helping inhabitants claim their right to the city by reclaiming and again making public 'El Campo De Cebada' in Madrid.

→ Lucas Devolder (Constructlab, Berlin)

Lucas is part of Constructlab, a collaborative construction practice working on both ephemeral and permanent projects, based in Berlin. He will talk more about their project 'DISpaly' in which they helped citizens to rediscover and reactivate a hidden green area in Hasselt, Belgium.

Moderator

Stijn Oosterlynck (Antwerp Urban Studies Institute)

Practical

→ Reserve a free ticket and get a reminder for the even via the button below.

→ Watch the livestream event on the Facebookpage of Stadsform

This event is part of the Maak De Stad series organized by Stasform in collaboration with the Antwerp Urban Studies Institute. This evening is also part of the international Project ‘International Declaration of Urban Rights’. More info on: www.urbanrights.org