Métropoles (Oct 2018)
Quel Nouvel Agenda urbain pour les quartiers précaires ? La fabrique des accords internationaux sur l’urbanisation pour la conférence Habitat III
Abstract
In the last four decades, the international community has embraced the issue of rapid urbanization but still remains disempowered when facing the necessity to contain the growing number of dwellers living in precarious or under-equipped neighborhoods. This article questions the processes leading to the international Habitat III conference in Quito in 2016. Precarious housing has gained prominence in the UN’s international agenda, which allows the exploration of both continuities and ruptures with the previous Habitat I (1976) and Habitat II (1996) conferences. Drawing on the growing diversity of actors and ideas in use, this paper highlights the internationalization of local governments, urban professionals and social movements in line with the influence struggles for the production of international UN-Habitat recommendations. This is not to forget the general context of state cuts to the housing sector which goes recently along with the financiarization process of the city. Thus, both authors consider the complexity of an official negotiated discourse, the outcome of political compromise which is finally reductive, composite and contradictory. As metropolitan spaces are over time more and more coveted, international institutions and local and national governments – driven by professional networks and global social movements - are attempting to address this neo-liberal turn by promoting “the right to the city” or, failing that, social inclusion. Beyond their weak capacity of enforcement, these conferences also appear as incubators of both concepts and social innovations at the global scale.
