Right to the city explained

Last Sunday we were invited to speak about our work in front of the architecture students at the Sint Lucas campus in Brussels, as part of the reputable and ongoing debate panel “SofaTalk.”

Right at the beginning, we were asked a very simple yet fundamental question: What is the right to the city?

In all honesty, we gave a correct answer, but we are not sure it was the clearest one.
So we feel we owe this question a better response—especially to our future colleagues.
With that in mind, we would like to offer a simpler definition, explained through a short story.

Long ago, before the evolution of civilization, humans—like all other living beings—relied directly on their natural environment to survive. We hunted, gathered fruits, and eventually learned to cultivate crops.
In that sense, everyone had a right to the environment, because it was the essential resource of life on the planet where we happened to exist.

However, with the development of civilization—and especially after the Industrial Revolution—most of the resources necessary for life became centralized in cities.
Food became cheaper and more accessible. But beyond food, the city also became the place where we could find everything else humans need: social interaction, culture, opportunities, connections, and even the space to question and challenge political power.

Cities, in other words, became the concentrated resource for contemporary human existence.
Our survival took on a new form: instead of going into the forest or the jungle, we now rely on the city to live.

Seen this way, the city is in fact a major resource of life for everyone.

The problem begins when someone with more power restricts access to this essential resource.
And this, in a nutshell, is the right to the city—interpreted in our own authentic way.