The Right To The City And Its Legal Realization

The right to the city is a new strategy raised by foreign scholars to deal with current global problems of urbanization.The current study on the right to the city is mainly within the fields of philosophy,city study and politics,and Chinese scholars pay little attention to this topic.This article introduces the current foreign study on the right to the city,explores the legal realization of the right to the city and tries to analyze China's problems of urbanization in the perspective of the right to the city.From ancient times to the present,people have discussed their ideal city under different themes,such as the personality of rulers,religious worship in cities,the way to form the city community and the features of "space".Since the Second World War,global urbanization has sped up while various kinds of problems of urbanization also come into view.Under this background,some foreign scholars and the international society begin to think about the problems of urbanization using the theory of the right to the city.The French scholar Henri Lefebvre firstly raised the concept of the right to the city.Later,the English scholar David Harvey gave a further study on the theory of the right to the city.The international discussion on the right to the city includes the World Urban Forum organized by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme(UN-Habitat),the European Charter to Safeguard Human Rights in the City,the World Charter for the Right to the City and the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in 2016.The legal realization of the right to the city,includes accepting the right to the city into the international human rights conventions on the international level and accepting the right to the city into the national law on the national level.As for the international level,after analyzing the concept and the characteristics of the right to the city and human rights,the author thinks that the right to the city belongs to human rights and that there is significance of accepting the right to the city into the international human rights conventions.When it comes to the national level,Latin American countries such as Brazil,Ecuador and Mexico have accepted the right to the city into their national law.Furthermore,the democratic governance is the core of the right to the city,and the theory of the right to the city emphasizes the protection of the right of the disadvantaged and the marginalized to participate in decision-making.Using the perspective of the right to the city to analyze China's problems of urbanization,this can be seen as follows:For the problem of housing,China promotes the commercialization of housing,which gives priority to the commercial value of city housing rather than its social value.However,the commercialization of housing will do harm to the right of the disadvantaged to housing.As for the problem of migrant workers,both migrant workers and those with the urban hukou are the subjects of the right to the city,who build the city and have the right to access city resources.Thus,migrant workers should gain equal treatment by concept and by system.Although there remains difficulties in the justiciability of the right to the city,the theory of the right to the city is still an inspiration,making us rethink our relationship with the city.