IRGLUS News | Vol. 4, No. 3

IRGLUS NEWS | VOL. 4, NO. 3 | JULY 2017
The newsletter of the International Group on Law and Urban Space
www.irglus.org | www.facebook.com/IRGLUS

IRGLUS Membership Information

We are running a survey to establish who our members are, where they are based, and what their research interests entail.

Thank you to those who have taken the time to respond to our request. If you have not yet had an opportunity to do so, we would greatly appreciate it if you could take the time to fill in this form.

Introduction

Dear IRGLUS members

Welcome to this mid-year edition of the IRGLUS newsletter.

It has been a busy time for us. IRGLUS recently co-hosted a two-day workshop on the judiciary and the city in New York City, and also chaired a session organized by the Legal Geography CRN at the joint Law and Society Association and International Association for the Sociology of Law in Mexico City in late June.

We are happy to report that our network keeps on growing, with both events displaying the increased diversity of our membership – both in terms of nationality and in terms of discipline.

We are always keen to be involved in international events on law and urban space and, as usual, we ask members to alert us if they are organising any such events and would like to draw on the IRGLUS network for participants.

We are also currently working on a proposal to host/chair a dedicated IRGLUS session, tentatively on the readiness of legal systems for implementation of the New Urban Agenda, at the World Urban Forum to be held in Kuala Lumpur in early 2018. We ask members who are planning to attend the WUF and who would be interested in taking part in such a session, to get in touch with us. We will keep you updated on the outcome of the proposal.

Otherwise, we remain keen to share details of your initiatives, research projects and events pertaining to law and urban space on the IRGLUS website, Facebook group or in future editions of this newsletter – so please let us know if you have anything to disseminate.

We wish you a productive and fulfilling remainder of 2017.

Thomas Coggin and Marius Pieterse
Global Co-ordinators

Publication:
Reforming Urban Laws in Africa: A Practical Guide

IRGLUS member Stephen Berrisford recently launched a new publication entitled Reforming Urban Laws in Africa: a Practical Guide. Authored with the late Patrick MacAuslan, and published by the African Center for Cities, Cities Alliance, UN Habitat, and Urban LandMark, the guide is intended to provide hands-on guidance to officials, practitioners, and researchers working on legislative reform in the urban environment in the sub-Saharan region of Africa.

In the foreword, Stephen notes:

'As you read this guide, please remember that there is no instant cure for urban legal problems. Cities and legal systems are too complex for that to be possible. However, this guide can help practitioners both within and outside governments to design and lead urban law-making processes that, at the very least, avoid the mistakes of the past, and that, in an ideal situation, set new benchmarks for effective and responsive urban laws.'

Download the guide in English here.
Download the guide in Portuguese here.

IRGLUS 2017 Workshop:
A Jurisprudence of the City - The Judiciary & the City.

In conjunction with Fordham University's Urban Law Center, IRGLUS on 14 & 15 June 2017 convened a workshop of over 20 academics, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss how in many respects urban governance, processes, practices, spaces, and imaginaries are enacted through the judiciary.

In deciding these matters, questions considered at the workshop included: do judges merely repeat traditional assumptions underlying the law vis-à-vis the city, or do judges see the law as a transformative tool in driving forth a vision of spatial justice? What is this vision? Are judges necessarily qualified to make this kind of discursive analysis – why, or why not? At what point do judges ‘overstep’ their reach and intrude on the domain of the Executive or the Legislature – if at all?

Stories from IRGLUS's Facebook Page...

The Economist: 1843 Magazine
Not drowning, but suffocating
Edward Lucas
10 July 2017

'Though nobody publicly supports overcrowding, institutional lassitude and powerful interest groups make it hard for the government to get to grips with the city’s problems. It took ten years, for instance, to get rid of a dozen hawkers selling pigeon feed on St Mark’s Square. Two were given city-owned shops to run; the others were paid off at a rate of €80,000 each. Dealing with bigger interest groups – such as the 550 gondoliers and 1,000 water-taxi operators – requires a level of political will which the municipality cannot muster. For trying to curb the size, numbers and spread of the bancarelle, which are owned by well-off Venetians but staffed mostly by South Asians, the mayor was called a fascist and racist. It does not help that Venice and Mestre, the larger and more industrial district on the mainland, are governed together, for their interests do not always coincide. Cruise ships, for instance, are good for Mestre and bad for Venice. Splitting Venice from Mestre – the subject of the referendum in October – could, just possibly, give the islands’ long-suffering inhabitants a chance to improve the city’s prospects by curbing the greedy, rent-seeking behaviour of the tourism business, limiting numbers and pricing public space properly.'