Claiming the Right to the City

The right to the city – the freedom for all to occupy, govern, change, and enjoy the city and access its resources – is fundamental to genuinely inclusive democracy. Claiming the Right to the City critically explores attempts to redefine Brazil’s planning model based on social justice. The Brazilian experience of profound urban challenges over the past forty years reveals the division between a theoretically acknowledged right to the city and the reality of urban policy, planning, and practice, within the context of economic inequality and unequal rights. Abigail Friendly highlights the role of urban social movements and participatory planning, and proposes an approach uniting institutions with bottom-up engagement of citizens, communities, and grassroots organizations to drive urban transformations. Claiming the Right to the City provides insight into how the right to the city is localized in practice, offering lessons that are broadly applicable to cities around the world.