26-01-2016

The World Urban Forum 7 declaration on urban equity

and its conceptual resonance with the issue papers
elaborated for HABITAT III1

Matas Rivera
The city of the global south
First semester, 2015/2016 academic year

Introduction
According to data retrieved from the World Urbanization Prospects (Population
Division of DESA-UN, 2014), on the next 20 years the urban population of the world
will increase in the staggering amount of 1,4 billion people, which also implies that
by 20362 the urban population will represent the 63% of the entire world population.
Its under these projections that the Habitat Conference and the World Urban
Forum 3 , both sponsored by the United Nations, justify the urgency to gather
government officials, scholars, decision makers, NGOs and other influential world
leaders to debate and agree upon guidelines and actions, seeking to impact in the
most positive way possible the development of urbanization in the coming years.
The present essay is an attempt to reveal possible continuities and ruptures
between the official discourses of WUF7 and Habitat III, this in order to achieve a
better (if only partial) understanding of the international debate on urbanization in the
specific issue of urban equity, at the same time recognizing that despite the shared
topics, there are clear differences that set both events apart, most fundamentally
the fact that as an official UN Conference, Habitat has the potential of going further
than the non-legislative WUF in linking its outcomes to impacts on national
legislation, which essentially will shape the development of our Worlds cities.
(Paraschivoiu, 2014)

In particular, the Issue Papers that seemingly relate more directly to the debate addressed on WUF7
on urban equity, namely the Issue Paper on Inclusive Cities (2015), Issue Paper on Spatial Planning
and Design (2015) and the Issue Paper on Urban-Rural Linkages (2015)
2 The 20-year time span was chosen to coincide with the time span in-between Habitat Conferences.
3 The upcoming versions are Habitat III (Quito, 2016) and WUF9 (Kuala Lumpur, 2018)

The WUF7 concept paper

Prepared in 2012 and titled Urban Equity in Development Cities For Life, the
document was elaborated by Eduardo Lpez Moreno (director of GOU-UN) to serve
as a background for the conferences and debates that where to take place in
Medelln on April, 2014.
As an introduction, it contains an extensive review and a few relevant data insertions
on the increasing levels of structural inequalities/differentials present in urban areas
in general, and in the cities of developing countries in particular. Special emphasis
is made on the physical, cultural and economic divides that burden many
contemporary cities as a result of said differences on opportunities, that tend to
affect to a greater extent the most vulnerable sectors of the population.
These inequalities are therefore evaluated as structural since they are considered to
be present in almost every area of development, hence at the very core of the
urbanization practices of recent years, and believed to constitute a relevant issue
even for the so-called developed countries that oftentimes consists on partial or
fixed lack of social mobility, increasing immigrant poverty, many forms of urban
violence and other issues related to spatial segregation based on the physical
manifestation of historically-rooted social classification.
After presenting this rather grey scenario of unequally distributed urban advantages
(access to all basic, decent living conditions) the document goes on to concentrate
on the other side of the coin of structural inequality: the possibility that urban equity
represents as a concept and as an operational tool nowadays, arguing that the
impediments for it to be considered a serious, fundamental aspect of human and
urban development debts to the existence of, per example, the Washington
Consensus (2003) where Lpez Moreno criticizes the view that equity is a byproduct after economic growth has taken place implying that the very divide
between equity and growth might as well be the main reason for the sustained
increase of urban inequalities, proposing instead both terms as partners rather
than adversaries.
The document continues on to address what urban equity as a concept is and is
not, while trying to convey the message that it has both conceptual and practical
qualities for city planners and decision makers. With the subsequent proposal of
Cities for Life as the embodiment of all practical aspects of urban equity and
portraying the host city, Medelln, as exemplary on Cities for Life standards.

Commentaries on WUF7 concept paper

While generally conveying a clear, strong message about what a concept like urban
equity in development can signify in the context of a worldwide development
agenda, there are a few aspects of the discourse that are prone to critical inspection
and would require further discussion, namely:
1) The way in which the paper attempts to indicate the substantial differences in
meaning between the three important terms used to define the central
argument: differentials, inequality and inequity using them extensively for a
couple of paragraphs and then providing a separate definitions box (that then
proposes that all terms somehow work always at the same time) is simply not
clear enough to generate a convention to keep as reference for future research.
In essence, an inequality is basically a difference in size, degree or
circumstance and as with the word differentials it constitutes a potentially
neutral description of variation in circumstance. on the other hand inequity
describes a lack of fairness or justice (Stephens, 2012) which strips from it the
neutrality of the previous terms.
2) Even if its true that the paper goes on great length to stress the reasons why all
types and kinds of inequalities generates inadequate living conditions for the
poorest urban population, to the point where it is said to transgress their basic
human rights. The main arguments to invite adhesion from stakeholders to the
urban equity policy break down mostly to (liberal) economic justifications on
growth efficiency and, if ever mentioned, the social aspects product of urban
equity are portrayed merely as a safeguard from risks of political instability
(that could) reduce incentives to invest and reproduce impair growth, all of the
above added to the use of dated categories like developing world, emerging
economies, traditionally egalitarian nations and the reductive local, national
and regional levels template (where local could be virtually anything within a
national state) amount to a far too simplistic and abstract treatment of the
complexity the issues of equity and equality represent for the cities and their
future development.

3) The paper proposes a friendlier, slogan-like term to exemplify urban equity as a

possible policy, labeled Cities for Life, it is described a simple concept that
can facilitate a better understanding of the fundamental problems of humanity
and that brings a new dimension to equity while never backing up such
hyperbolic statements with actual work schemes, other than the characteristic
of long-term vision (that) go beyond the boundaries of short-term and
fragmented agreements that are imposed by the governors political terms in
office, ensuring continuity that does not constitute a novelty in planning theory
by that alone.
The praising of Medelln as an exemplary city under these criteria is also a
paradigmatic aspect of the text and the forum, and was openly criticized4. While
it is true that a good amount of work is verifiable on the recovery of the
metropolitan area from the hands of drug cartels and the reduction of poverty5,
the city relationship with progress on equity and equality is not as evident, or
only evident on a superficial level, since the urban recovery started in the early
2000s there has been a positive image of the city in the media despite the fact
that Medellin is one of the most socially unequal cities in the world6. Claims are
perhaps rightfully made that in this case a branch of contemporary urbanism
() has become increasingly inclined towards the spectacular and its marketing
potential () (A fetish-like attitude towards) the architectural object and urban
design project is an inevitable outcome. (Brand, 2013)

4 With Joan Clos, former mayor of Barcelona, at the helm of UN-Habitat, it is not surprising that the

consensus has settled around what we might call the Barcelona model of the compact city(3)
5

From 2005 to 2012 poverty in Colombias two largest cities, Bogota and Medelln fell by an average
of 23.3%(2)

6 Inequality in Colombia`s urban centers grew by 15% between 1990 and 2010. () inequality is
growing faster in Colombia than in any other of the 18 Latin American countries studied by the UN.(4)

Urban equitys presence on the New Urban Agenda:

Presented as the guideline documents for debate on more than 20 specific topics of
human settlements, the only Habitat preparation documents that slightly address
the issues debated on WUF7 are the Issue Paper on Inclusive Cities (2015) and
Issue Paper on Spatial Planning and Design (2015). Only marginally highlighting
one of the many statistics introduced in the 2012 conceptual paper and replacing
the concept of equity for the newcomer term inclusion as in inclusive cities in the
first paper, and introducing income equality as a keyword in the second (and never
directly mentioning it again) the life span of the concept seems to have reached fullcircle, at least for now.
While some countries and organization recommend the addition of an equity in
cities- appendix (Finland, European Union, Ecuador, to some extent Mexico) there
seems to be a bigger interest in nations to campaign the right to the city slogan
when it comes to conceptualizing urbanization, in an attempt to find and easily
agreeable common ground to work on.
As a final statement the author will take distance from both the inclusion and right
to the city monikers, since they represent an ambiguous stand on urbanization.
Inclusion being an appreciative attitude of rather compassion-fueled actions by the
rich and for the poor (-we- the rich include you- the poor) Right to the city has
had a well over 60 years of constant stripping down into a formative manual in
participation and conflict resolution that holds barely anything of its original
proposal.
The goal to achieve cities that are more cohesive, fair, and above all equal in
opportunities for all the inhabitants without distinction should remain intact given the
challenges of today and, specially, tomorrows urbanization.

REFERENCES:
1) Brand P (2013) Governing inequality in the South through the Barcelona model:
social urbanism in Medelln, Colombia. Universidad Nacional de Colombia
2) DANE Colombia (2014) Pobreza Monetaria y Multidimensional 2013.
3) Datu, K (2014) The road to Habitat III: a wake-up call to the New Urban Agenda.
The Global Urbanist.

4) UN-Habitat - Lpez Moreno, E (2013) Human Development Report for Latin

America 2013-2014
5) Paraschivoiu, I (2014) Lessons learned from the World Urban Forum 7. Why the
new Urban Agenda matters. London School of Economics
6) Stephens, C (2012) Urban Inequities; Urban Rights: A Conceptual Analysis and
Review of Impacts on Children, and Policies to Address Them. Urban Health
Journal.
7) UN-Habitat (2015) I: Issue Paper on Inclusive Cities
VIII: Issue Paper on Urban and Spatial Planning and Design
8) World Urban Forum 7 (2014) Medellin Declaration