Right to the city: analysis of factors that drive and prevent the occupation and transformation of public space. Case Case.

In the 60s Henri Lefebvre develops the concept of the right to the city; Concept that in recent years has been claimed as a call to popular participation in urban transformations processes. For Lefebvre, this concept has several key ideas, including the right not only to occupy public space but also the right to transform that public space. Based on the idea that every citizen has the right to the city, we ask ourselves if in Cuenca a process of involving the population in the definition, design, public policies, use and transformation of collective spaces at a neighborhood scale is occurring. As a team of multidisciplinary researchers, we seek to answer a central question, what political processes and spatial structures act as promoting and restrictive factors of the right to the city in Cuenca? This question leads us to the following tasks: What does it mean right to the city in the theoretical/academic world?, In the world of people who are building the city as the architects, technicians or professionals who work in urban management?, In the world of political culture as leaders and their relationship with the rulers? And in the world of citizens in their daily lives? The project has the participation of researchers from several technical and social areas: architects, designers, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, lawyers belonging to the Research Groups of Llactalab and Chords, so articulates a series of epistemological entries that try to overcome the dichotomies between the technical and social. We will start the project with a macro analysis of the situation in basin based on already obtained, but not analyzed from this perspective. Then we will specify in previously selected neighborhoods based on chord intervention projects and Llactalab, which will allow us to take advantage of the available databases to analyze from defined spaces and processes, how the right to the city in Cuenca is developing.

XIV RESEARCH PROJECT COMPETITION