Solarpunk Urbanism

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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.

Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.

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the purpose of a system is what it does (slrpnk.net)

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (7 children)

And what's the problem? So what if a whole bunch of single people moved into tiny government houses? Housing is a human right. And it sure would bring rents down.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Maybe your opinion is that housing is a human right but I’m not sure where you are drawing that definitive conclusion from. Are you saying it’s a legal right somewhere or that it’s your emotional stance? In my experience, housing, or even just shelter, is a human responsibility not a right.

Don’t get me wrong, it’d sure be nice if it was a legal right for folks to have a safe shelter of sorts. Men are commonly turned away from the limited shelters that exist due to comfort and safety concerns for women and children. I don’t see how that happens if it’s a human right.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Maybe your opinion is that housing is a human right but I’m not sure where you are drawing that definitive conclusion from. Are you saying it’s a legal right somewhere or that it’s your emotional stance?

The right to housing is a fundamental human right, according to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many international treaties and agreements since. As the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights puts it:

Adequate housing was recognized as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in article 11.1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Other international human rights treaties have since recognized or referred to the right to adequate housing or some elements of it, such as the protection of one’s home and privacy.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-housing/human-right-adequate-housing

Your personal experience has given you an incorrect belief regarding the human right to housing. I'm sorry to call you out so directly, but sometimes people need to hear hard truths. Facts don't care about your feelings.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don’t feel like you called me out at all but that doesn’t seem to establish any kind of legal human right to any specific area of interest that I have seen discussed here. Are you able to clarify how I’m missing that part of it?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Perhaps we're talking past each other. Human rights are not defined by laws. Human rights come before laws. Laws, in decent nations, are written in such a way as to protect human rights.

The text of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, enacted by the UN in the hope that never again would the world see such widespread and horrific violations of human rights as it did during World War II, is an excellent starting point to understand how the modern world sees human rights. It is linked in the post I linked above.

And, just to circle back around to the topic, the laws of the United States are clearly failing to protect the fundamental human right to adequate housing for all persons resident in the United States.