ABSTRACT
The right to the city builds on a long trajectory of socio-territorial struggles in Latin America and the Caribbean. The right to the city may now be embraced by many social movements, scholars, and activists around the globe, but it also has strong antecedents and grounding in this region. In this chapter, we narrate the emergence and ongoing organizing, research, and practice around the right to the city from the vantage point of Latin America and the Caribbean, including its crucial contributions around urban reform, the social production of habitat, and poder popular. Although explicit references to the right to the city in the region can be traced to the 1970s, the concept started to gain broader traction after the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil (2001), and the dissemination of the World Charter on the Right to the City (2005). By highlighting examples from Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Medellín, Mexico City, Montevideo, San Juan, São Paulo, and several other cities, the chapter conveys the range of experiences and challenges in materializing the right to the city, as well as how these have been analyzed by scholars and activists. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the dynamic nature of right to the city struggles in the region and beyond.
