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Paper short abstract:

The 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development (RtD) and the ‘right to the city’ complement one another but community-based development discourses in marginalised parts of greater Johannesburg resonate more with RtD principles, particularly those captured in the title of this paper.

Paper long abstract:

The 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development is one of the most controversial rights-based claims within the UN, given its emphasis on collective rather than individual rights and its far-reaching demands on the international community. With roots in the anti-colonial movement in Africa and first suggested to the UN from within this continent, it is tailored to the post-colonial problems and potentials of Africa. Individual and collective political consciousness and responsibility in relation to development at all scales, as well as self-determination, equality and fairness, are core to the right to development. Whereas this right was endorsed by the UN’s Sustainable Development Declaration in 2015 and is acknowledged in the UN’s New Urban Agenda (NUA) of 2016, its radical demands and approaches are largely ignored. The ‘right to the city’ in turn has its first recognition within the UN through clauses in NUA. This paper reviews the meaning of the right to development versus the so-called ‘right to the city’ for urban policy. In asking what politically conscientized, self-determined and fair development may mean at the local scale, it takes a deep dive into the everyday development discourses of two community development forums in greater Johannesburg as they struggle to secure the land their communities occupy and as they negotiate with a fraught service-delivery machinery. The paper argues that whereas the right to the city initiative provides important mechanisms for urban policy, in Johannesburg, the right to development resonates more directly within everyday struggles for a better urban future.