POR UM COSMOPOLITISMO DESDE ABAIXO

O DIREITO À CIDADE COMO PROPOSTA DE DIREITO HUMANO.

Abstract

This article examines the right to the city as an emerging human right proposal, capable of grounding a cosmopolitanism built from below, based on local democratic practices and urban social movements. The argument develops along three articulated axes. First, drawing from the critical theory of human rights—especially the formulation of Joaquín Herrera Flores—rights are conceived not as fixed normative data, but as cultural products and historical processes of struggle for dignity. This perspective allows us to situate the right to the city as an enabling process for new spaces of claim. Second, the article analyzes the context of capitalist globalization and the crisis of liberal democracies, characterized by the commodification of cities, the weakening of the Welfare State, the rise of post-democratic discourses, and the exacerbation of social and spatial inequalities. In this scenario, branded cities coexist with impoverished neighborhoods, while processes of touristification and gentrification deepen urban segregation. Thirdly, articulating the contributions of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey, the article recovers the critical power of the concept of the right to the city—understood as the right to urban life, to the appropriation of space, and to participation in the production of the city—and examines its institutional development in the main international charters and declarations. Based on the debate on governance, information technologies, and municipalism, the article concludes that experiences of participatory democracy and community self-management—such as the mutual support networks that emerged during the pandemic—offer concrete bases for the construction of a cosmopolitan citizenship from the local level, capable of confronting the boundaries of law in the era of the global city.