Through education, research and demonstration building programs, we are now working in five areas where we see human rights intersecting with the built environment
*Click the right arrow icon or anywhere on the paragraph to read more below*
Rights of Access
Working with communities to overcome exclusion in access to buildings, to resources, to transportation, and to the city as a whole.
For the architectural profession this begins with the implementation of building and land use regulations concerning disabilities which must be met by design professionals. Most architects do not associate this with human rights but it is (see examples here and here). It goes beyond that, though, to the right to the city (see the World Charter on the Right to the City) and broad issues of land use regulations in aid of exclusion (see, for example, the Mt. Laurel decisions).
Forced Evictions
Advocacy and design alternatives for the victims of development-induced displacement.
This is particularly related to what is often referred to as ‘development-induced displacement’ (see here and here to start). It also relates to displacement through gentrification and other forms of economic displacement as well as all the more traditional causes raised in the Vancouver Habitat conferences in 1976 (see here and here), Istanbul 1996 (see here and here) and in Quito 2016 (the New Urban Agenda).
Environmental Rights
Advocacy and design alternatives which protect traditional and legal land rights in the face of disaster and development.
The issue of post-tsunami land rights was reviewed here. In addition to land rights, the interrelationship here between architecture and environmental rights must include many issues of environmental justice where architecture can effectively support the right to clean air, water, and energy.