WS28 – Inhabitants

In partnership with :

International Alliance of Inhabitants : www.habitants.org

Workshop presentation

The world has become urban. The very big city is the very embodiment of the modern world. Its organisation is greatly determined by national and local public authorities. Its production and management are often dominated by property developers and managers or by managers of large-scale services. But the city is also one of the foremost public goods, and housing one of the essential needs and the guarantee of dignity.

Poorly organised as social forces except on a small-scale, the inhabitants of cities only rarely have their word to say and their influence in urban choices, except through their periodic voting, and increasingly often today, through the setting up of participative procedures. But while the middle classes often have the economic and political means to make themselves heard, this is not the case for the poorest inhabitants. Many, moreover, have an insecure status that takes the form of massive expulsions and casting out to the outskirts of cities. Over the last 20 years or so, new methods of organisation and stronger aspirations, especially for the respect of rights, have appeared. In China, the massive displacements of populations to the outskirts of cities or in old neighbourhoods under the pressure of local public authorities and property developers is stirring up increasingly sharp reactions. How, in China and in Europe, can the ideas of right to the city, right to housing and right to dignity be expressed and above all gradually materialise? How can the inhabitants be, alongside the local public authorities and businessmen, the co-builders and co-managers of the city?

This will be a core question of the inhabitants workshop.