| Summary: | "Increasingly, urban actors invoke human rights to address inequalities, combat privatisation, underline common aspirations. The potential and the pitfalls of these processes are conditioned by the urban, and deeply political. These urban politics of human rights are at the heart of this book. An international line up of contributors with a background in practice and theory and long-term engagement with the cities shed light on these politics in cities in four continents and eight cities, presenting a wealth of empirical detail and disciplinary theorisation. They analyse the 'city society', the urban actors involved, and the mechanisms of human rights mobilisation. In doing so, they show the commonalities in rights engagement in today's globalised and often spatially deeply inequal cities characterised by urban law, private capital but also communities that rally around concepts as the 'right to the city'. At the same time, they show how very different these dynamics play out in postcolonial contexts and specific political dispensations. Most importantly, the chapters shed light on the conditions under which this mobilisation truly contributes to social justice, be it concerning the simple right to presence, cultural rights, accessible housing or - in times of Covid - health care. Urban Politics of Human Rights provides indispensable reading for anyone with a practical or theoretical interest in the complex, deeply political, but also truly promising interrelationship between human rights and the urban"-- Provided by publisher.
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