Since 2005, the UN-HABITAT and the UNESCO have launched a series of actions on the question of urban citizenship and the right to the city. In particular, in 2005, UNESCO and UN-HABITAT started a project entitled “Urban Policies and the Right to the City: Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship” (Brown and Kristianson, 2009) and the latest UN-HABITAT report on the state of the world’s cities articulates the importance of taking forward the right to the city as a vehicle for social inclusion.

The objectives of this research-policy paper are twofold: (i) to discuss the Right to the City (RTTC) approach and to examine its analytical and pragmatic value for the case of Indian cities; and (ii) to take stock, on a number of themes (women in the city, access to decent housing and urban services, discrimination, livelihoods, land, etc.), of the existing situation and problems, including the legal and policy framework, and of the directions that are - or should be - taken towards the promotion of social justice. As part of this exercise, the report aims at assessing various public policies in terms of their inclusiveness, understanding their limits, and proposing a series of recommendations.

Content

Right to the City and Urban Citizenship in the Indian Context
Marie-Hélène Zérah, Stéphanie Tawa Lama Rewal, Véronique Dupont, Basudeb Chaudhuri

The Constitutional and International Framework
Miloon Kothari

A Philosophical Reading of the RTTC
Upendra Baxi

Urban Governance: How Democratic?
Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal

Women's Right to the City: from Safety to Citizenship?
Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal

Caste and Class in Indian Cities: Habitation, Inequality and Segregation
Diya Mehra

Muslim Neighbourhoods and Segregation in the City
Joyita Ghose

Migrants' (Denied) Right to the City
Ram B. Bhagat

Urban Spatial Exclusion: A Historical Perspective
Diya Mehra

Claiming Land: Rights, Contestations and the Urban Poor in Globalized Times
Solomon Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari Raman

The Challenge of Slums and Forced Evictions
Véronique Dupont

Urban Livelihoods: the City versus the Informal Economy
Sharit Bhowmik, Marie-Hélène Zérah, Basudeb Chaudhuri

Water and Sanitation: Barriers to Universalization
Marie-Hélène Zérah

Urban Transport and the Right to the City: Accessibility and Mobility
Kavya Murthy

The Retreat of the State in Healthcare Policy and the Right to the City
Ravi Duggal

A Human Rights' Perspective for the Right to the City
Miloon Kothari