Open Lecture Series: The Right to the City? Struggles for decent housing and equitable access to the city in Cali, Buenos Aires, and Berlin
This chair is the result of collaboration between social movements and community organizations from three territories: Cali, Buenos Aires and Berlin, who came together from the struggles for decent housing and fair access to the city.
The central objective is to make visible, reflect on and disseminate the experiences of struggles, organization and resistance against the commodification of habitat and the city, exploring how the capitalist model systematically violates the right to decent housing and territory.
Through four sessions, a trans-territorial dialogue is woven between organizational processes from Colombia, Argentina and Germany, showing that, despite geographical and cultural distances, urban struggles share common enemies: real estate speculation, the financialization of rights, the privatization of public resources and planned exclusion.
Session 1: No people without homes, no homes without people
This session seeks to lay the theoretical and political foundations of the chair, defining from popular voices three structural problems that violate the right to decent housing and the right to the city:
1. Banking of rights: How housing and habitat become financial commodities, subject to mortgage loans, conditional subsidies and perpetual indebtedness, excluding popular sectors.
2. Privatization of habitat and services: The control of land, water, transport and energy by private actors, which generates urban segregation and dispossession.
3. State inertia: The lack of political will and the inability of States to guarantee rights despite the existence of regulatory frameworks, which leaves the burden of resistance to the communities.
Participants:
- Bernarda Pabón (CECUCOL/ Social, Popular and Community Minga of Cali, Colombia)
- Ana Gamarra (ACUMTIS, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
- Fernando Martínez (Migrant City / Latin American Bloc Berlin, Germany)
- Anny Roa Pabón (CECUCOL / Social, Popular and Community Minga of Cali, Colombia)
- Rebecca Campos Siebeck (Latin American Perspective, Kassel, Germany)
Questions to keep thinking about:
How does the financialization of housing transform a human right into a commodity, and what implications does this have for autonomy and the reproduction of life in popular territories?
What alternatives could we consider to decouple access to housing and the city from the logic of the market and indebtedness?
2 session: Urbanization and Reurbanization: The struggle for decent housing in Villa 20, Buenos Aires
This session presents the concrete experience of Villa 20 in Buenos Aires, a working-class neighborhood that achieved a process of urban renewal and recognition of rights driven by community organizing based on 3 key areas:
1. The historical struggle for urbanization
2. Community work as a basis
3. Resistance to the conservative shift
Participants:
- Marisa Llanos (ACUMTIS)
- Beatriz Pedro (ACUMTIS)
- Martin Aldao (ACUMTIS)
Questions to keep thinking about:
What lessons can we learn from the Villa 20 experience regarding the construction of popular power and community management of habitat as a strategy to confront urban exclusion?
In a context of advancing neoliberal and repressive policies, how can social organizations protect the gains achieved and sustain processes of self-management and collective care?
Session 3 – For a life, for a roof over one's head: Housing is a right! From Cali, in motion for the right to land, territory, and decent housing
This session, focused on the experience of the Popular and Community Social Minga of Cali, addresses the right to decent housing, the city, and territory from the perspective of Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights (ESCR). It develops three main themes:
1. Enforceability and articulation
2. Resistance and defense of the territory
3. Structural violence and revictimization
Participants:
- Bernarda Pabón (CECUCOL / Popular and Community Social Minga of Cali)
- marlene gomez (Reflections of Florida / Popular and Community Social Minga of Cali)
- Carmen Cortes (Community Association Camino al Futuro / Popular and Community Social Minga of Cali)
- Mateo Garcia (Agroecological Garden Network of Cali / Popular and Community Social Minga of Cali)
- Anny Roa Pabón (CECUCOL / Popular and Community Social Minga of Cali)
Questions to keep thinking about:
Why is it essential to understand the right to housing and territory from an ESCR (Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights) approach to analyze urban dispossession phenomena?
What role do women and community-based approaches play in defending territory and building alternative ways of life in the face of state violence?
4 session: Migrant City: Struggles for the Right to the City in Berlin. A Movement in Transformation
We concluded the lecture with a presentation of the Ciudad Migrante experience in Berlin, showcasing how the Latin American community organizes itself in the face of urban exclusion, racist bureaucracy, and gentrification. This presentation focused on two central themes:
- The fight for registration (Anmeldung) campaign “Anmeldung für Alle” to confront it.
- Barriers and organizational strategies
Participants:
- Judith Lippelt (Migrant City – Latin American Bloc Berlin)
- Itziar Gastaminza (Migrant City – Latin American Bloc Berlin)
- Jason Bustos (Migrant City – Latin American Bloc Berlin)
- Fernando Martínez (Migrant City – Latin American Bloc Berlin)
Questions to keep thinking about:
What parallels exist between the struggles for the right to the city of migrants in Berlin and those of popular sectors in Latin American cities?
How does the struggle for registration (Anmeldung) in Berlin highlight the connection between formal rights, bureaucratic exclusion, and the social production of the neoliberal city?
