Urban Policies and the Right to the City. The UN-HABITAT and UNESCO Joint Project

Modern states are facing various political rescaling processes in which the roles and functions of the different levels of government are evolving. City regions are increasingly becoming central economic and political territories where new divisions of labor are taking place between the states and the urban powers that be. This tendency has been specifically analysed by economics, and also by geographs, sociologists, and political scientists. At the same time, there is a substantial amount of literature that focuses on the general tendency towards the pluralization of urban decision-making systems in different institutional, cultural, political and economic contexts. Globalisation, political rescaling and the "right to the city" (i.e., the ability of civil societies to have access and to change the political agenda) are interlinked but do not necessarily have the same meaning and the same ration-ale for each city and social group. This book analyzes the various differences and gives a voice to a variety of different actors.