The right to housing in theory and in practice: going beyond the West

During the last three decades processes of urban development have spread speedily across the globe, transforming hundreds of cities into primary sites for the implementation of a neoliberal agenda. As expected, this global phenomenon brings with it a number of negative consequences for the lives of disadvantaged urban residents. Privatization and commercialization of public space and housing stocks, increasing gentrification of neighbourhoods and deregulation of the housing sector are only a few examples of the adverse scenario that people from less well-off backgrounds have to face. These processes constitute capital-driven strategies that have been enforced by displacing, evicting, marginalizing and criminalizing communities who are, at the same time excluded from any participation in the decision-making process of the urban restructuring. These actions, carried out by corporations, investors and developers and closely backed up by entrepreneurial governments (Mayer, 2009) or “centaur-states” (Wacquant, 2012) are embedded in an accelerated process of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2008) that has exacerbated inequality and widened the gap between the rich and the poor. The effects of this growing polarization in the distribution of power and wealth can be easilyobserved in the spatial forms of the cities, in which gated communities, glittering city centre developments and privatized areas under non-stop surveillance coexist in sharp separation with favelas, precarious and informal settlements and impoverished working class neighbourhoods (Harvey, 2012; Lipman, 2011)