STATE OF THE WORLD'S CITIES 2012/2013 Prosperity

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Box 3.2.3 Individual versus collective interests The legal foundation of the 20th-century city lies in the ancient tenets of Roman Law and the Napoleonic Code, together with the subsequent elaboration into modern civil and common law. The gist of this legal corpus is the preeminence of the individual, who is considered as possessed of inherent rights as represented in the 18th century French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Within this individualistic legal tradition, property rights reign supreme, with the emphasis on the rights of owners to the detriment of their social implications and other, broader, collective interests, including duties and responsibilities. With particular regard to urban settings, ‘land and property are conceived largely as commodities whose economic value is determined by the owners’ interests.’ 52 In this system, the role of the State at all levels is relegated to harmonizing and mediating these interests, and to oversee those assets and facilities that require collective use. energy consumption and poor regard for the potential for agglomeration economies. TOWARDS A NEW LEGAL-URBAN ORDER FOR HOLISTIC PROSPERITy During the last two decades, the pitfalls of the conventional urban development model have become more glaring. As shown in the previous section (Urban Prosperity through Planning and Design) the potential of cities has not been fully harnessed, a more common trend has developed where urban development tends to be spatially fragmented and the benefits of prosperity remains socially segmented. In contrast, over the past two decades some Brazilian cities have taken to re-examining the prevailing urban legal order, with bold practical schemes inspired by a set of alternative, radical urban doctrines and jurisprudence which depart from the classical liberal legalism exalting individualism and private property. After a long period of consultations and negotiations, a nationwide those few City Statute was adopted FACT cities featuring in 2001 enshrining a Right balanced and to the City. The Statute sustainable prosperity makes an important have effectively contribution to urban deployed adequate laws, regulations and law, facilitating shared institutions in support of prosperity, particularly their transformation. in the context of a Innovating to Support the Transition to the City of the 21st Century 117 FACT Although the 20th-century city tends to exhibit fair degrees of vibrancy and dynamism, whatever attendant prosperity it experiences is often skewed and unsustainable – and therefore ridden with perennial crises. developing country. The Statute also “broke with the long-standing tradition of civil law and set the basis of a new legal-political paradigm for urban land use and development control.” 53 A prominent scholar highlights four dimensions of Brazil’s 2001 City Statute: “A conceptual one, providing elements for the interpretation of the constitutional principle of the social functions of urban property and of the city; the regulation of new instruments for the construction of a different urban order by the municipalities; the indication of processes for the democratic management of cities; and the identification of legal instruments for the comprehensive regularisation of informal settlements in private and public urban areas.” 54 This new urban legal order has had highly visible effects. As a nation and at macro-economic level, Brazil is among a handful of countries in the world that has been able to achieve remarkable growth rates for much of the early years of this century, despite the global economic turbulence. More significantly, Brazilian cities have been able to expand the middle class segments of their populations and to improve economic and living conditions for substantial numbers of poor residents. Although still very high, cities are reducing income inequalities, as measured by the Gini coefficient, which decreased from 0.606 in 1990 to 0.569 in 2009. 55 REvITALIzED ‘RIGHTS TO THE COMMONS’ AND ExPANSION OF THE PUBLIC REALM ‘Commons’ reinforce the social function of property and that of the city as a whole, while recognizing the dynamism of private assets. Laws, regulations and institutions as factors of restraint, opportunity and action, act as the levers that can optimize the social function of property and balance it out with private rights and assets. It must be stressed here that this social function is not about ownership rights or their transactional implications. Rather, it is essentially POLICy Shared urban prosperity is about enhancing the public realm, equitable sharing of public goods and consolidating rights to the commons for all.
State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013 about user rights for As cities work enhanced human value. POLICy on the five The ‘Right to dimensions of prosperity, the Commons’ is an there also occurs a progressive expansion in ancient concept in legal the size of the commons. jurisprudence originating More amenities are brought in feudal England, where into collective use and more it referred to the extension access is provided, enabling of user rights for all on larger numbers of urban a manor’s grazing land. residents to use and enjoy shared spaces, services and Lately, the notion has facilities. resurfaced in urban settings (including public goods, societal institutional arrangements, public culture, and heritage sites), The capacity for FACT a city to maintain where it is perceived as an extensive and quality effective way of countering shared spaces and facilities not just rampant enclosures provides a good indication and appropriations, but of its degree of prosperity. also the rise of duality under the form of inequity and segregation. In this respect, cities such as Helsinki, Toronto and Barcelona, which achieve high rankings on the UN- Habitat City Prosperity Index (CPI), feature more extensive public realms than Monrovia, Nairobi or Dakar, or similar cities with low CPI readings. Legal and regulatory instruments exert a major bearing on the origination and preservation of the commons, and also in ensuring indiscriminate access. Statutes, ordinances and regulations are the bases for the guidelines and standards regulating spatial layouts and construction designs. The same applies to institutional relationships, functional allocations and authority designation, besides In this era of resource distribution. The FACT enclosures, privatization and even legal framework in turn invasion of the traditional enables civic organisations urban commons (including and community activities. beaches, river banks, Equally significant is the forests, school yards and overall manner in which even pavements), the size legal-regulatory and and quality of a city’s overall public space acts as a institutional frameworks good indicator of shared delineate the public and prosperity. private spheres and guide the interaction between 118 and within them in the everyday workings of the city. One component of the commons that lately has attracted a lot of attention is the management of public spaces. 56 In Panama City, one of the local experts surveyed by UN-Habitat put it as follows: “The more degraded public space, the more degraded the citizen, because public space is not only about quality of life but also the expression of citizenship”. 57 Another local expert, in Santo Domingo, underscored the same point perhaps more incisively: “Citizens need to gain positive empowerment, to defend space enclaves where public life is still alive and where laws and norms for doing so are available.” 58 REvISITING URBAN CODES FOR SHARED PROSPERITy Rules and regulations constitute a key instrument in urban management and development. That is why appropriate institutions are required to ensure implementation and enforcement as well as awareness building and mobilization. Rules and regulations have significant roles to play, as they generally steer and circumscribe planning and construction. One author has even gone so far as to ascribe the ‘shaping and misshaping of American cities’ to poor planning regulations. 59 Indeed, zoning regulations, building codes, utility standards, deed restrictions and the many other instruments that shape the urban built environment, will determine not only the pattern, use and form of spaces and structures, but will also strongly influence the quality of life in cities. The review of regulatory frameworks is of particular importance for those cities in the developing world that have long operated with externally derived standards and codes, who, must also tend to effective implementation and enforcement capacities. Revisiting the codes developed for formerly colonial or apartheid cities like Nairobi, Dar es Salaam or Johannesburg in a bid to achieve an inclusive urban form is a challenging endeavour. This calls not only major for institutional restructuring, but also a revision of zoning and POLICy Laws, rules and institutions must be kept alert, not inert, to current and evolving needs and risks if a city’s whole human potential is to be harnessed, not repressed – empowering the whole population with “basic capabilities” or “generic conditions of agency” at the service of today’s and tomorrow’s prosperity.
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PRODUCTIVITY ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINA
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Copyright © United Nations Human S
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Foreword This is a time of crises.
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Acknowledgements CORE TEAM Director
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Chapter 1.1 Conceptualizing Urban P
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State of the World’s Cities 2012/
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Part Two
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Chapter 2.1 Productivity and the Pr
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Chapter 2.2 Urban Infrastructure: B
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STATE OF THE WORLD'S CITIES 2012/2013 Prosperity

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