Upgrading from below : a collective approach to the Right to the City in the Federal District, Mexico

In 2010, then-Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of Mexico's Distrito Federal (DF) signed the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City. Echoing a global movement by activists, academics, citizens, and government officials, a consortium of municipal activist organizations had written the charter over a three-year participatory process. However, like many Right to the City movements and charters globally, Mexico City has struggled to ground the principles of the Charter through policy, financial resources, and programs at the citywide level. This thesis will suggest an alternative framework for grounding the Right to the City: through local collective action that is connected by transnational networks of civil society actors. Drawing on the experiences of Frente de Renovación Fase 2, a self-built community in the eastern delegation of Izatapalapa, this thesis illustrates how local action is effective in achieving the Right to the City in the short-term, but that long-term gains must be maintained through city-, national-, and global-level networks.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Evans, Claire M. (Claire Meredith)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Balakrishnan Rajagopal.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98933

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/98933