The Right to the City from residential exclusion: The evolution of vulnerable neighborhoods in the Valencian Community

Abstract

The right to the city was a concept used for the first time by Lefebvre (1968) understood as that right of citizenship to constitute cities that respond to human needs. In this way, the needs of a city are nothing more than the express manifestation of the collective needs of its residents reflected in the urban and community space (Caravantes, 2018). The specific needs of the people who are an active and integral part of the cities can be added to the collective needs. The concentration of such needs, as well as phenomena linked to the residential environment, lead to the “accumulation of disadvantaged classes in cities” (Subirats, 2016, p. 43). On the other hand, Alguacil et al. (2014, p. 77) report that this accumulation refers to urban vulnerability, understood as “that potentiality of the population of a specific urban space being affected by some adverse circumstance (s). The social inequality and fragility that is generated in the structuring of certain territories and the location of social groups in them (Subirats, 2005), is explained through two different processes: the first one manifested through the socio-social profile. demographic and socio-economic community, where minority ethnic groups converge. Secondly, due to the structural characteristics of the neighborhoods, including the availability of resources and / or services and access to them. In this last point, the distancing of community resources determines the level of well-being available to the population and their deficiencies, they will mark their most sensitive points for the community. Based on this, there are different instruments at state and regional level that allow geographically identifying the location of vulnerable environments in cities. From the Atlas of Urban Vulnerability of the Ministry of Development, through autonomous studies such as the Social Risk Map of Zaragoza (MRSZ), the identification of areas of residential vulnerability in Barcelona, to the Viewer of Sensitive Urban Spaces (VEUS) of the Community Valenciana developed by the Department of Housing, Public Works and Urban Planning. In the latter case, VEUS measures urban vulnerability based on census sections, based on residential, socioeconomic and socio-demographic variables. From this, three types of urban vulnerability are identified concerning: integral vulnerability, poly-vulnerability and residual vulnerability. With this, the purpose of this communication corresponds to analyzing the evolution of the vulnerable neighborhoods of the CV since 1991 - 2016. However, the sources that allow to carry out a panel study based on that period, are identified with the Atlas of Urban Vulnerability and the Map on Housing and Roma Community in Spain. In addition to this, the territorial identification by types of vulnerability developed by the VEUS, also allows mapping each of the provinces by census section and identifying the territorial nuclei with the highest rates of residential, socioeconomic and socio-demographic vulnerability. According to the results obtained through the Ministry, the CV has experienced an increase in vulnerable neighborhoods similar to what happened in Spain. In 1991, a total of 24 vulnerable neighborhoods were defined in 9 cities, while in 2001 38 were identified in 12 cities. The dynamics of population concentration respond to “a series of inertia that are part of the system in which we live, which are present both in the policies that lead to poverty and, sometimes, in the forces that try to combat them” (Varea et al., 2016, p. 100). According to the latest FOESSA report (2019), migrant and Roma people are among those profiles with the highest risk of social exclusion, doubling the rate of social exclusion of the CV with respect to the rest of Autonomous Communities. If we look at the data of the Fundación Secretariado Gitano, Valencia is the Valencian province where the highest index of neighborhoods or settlements with Roma population has (5,534), followed by Alicante with 5,515 (Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, 2016). In this way, the results provide both quantitative data that show the emergence, increasingly noticeable of vulnerable neighborhoods, and maps of the urban vulnerability of the Valencian Community where these types of environments are reflected based on the three provinces. Likewise, VEUS (2018) identified a total of 830 census sections with a representation of Sensitive Urban Spaces (EUS) of 24%, being in Alicante 37.47% (458), Valencia with 17.92% (324) and Castellón with 10.48% (48). In this sense, the identification of EUS encompasses a larger territorial space than the administrative delimitation offered by the Vulnerability Atlas and offering a more detailed X-ray of the CV from the local and proximity level. Among the main conclusions, it should be noted that, both in the configuration of the right to the city and in the identification of those spaces marked by vulnerability, the phenomenon of residential exclusion is an essential issue that cannot be avoided by the public authorities in the guarantee of this right. The abandonment of public policies in favor of the right to the city aggravates and chronicles the inequalities existing in this type of urban environment. Currently, the political argument continues to be scrutinized in the already consolidated economic crisis and encountering significant resistance to developing a territorial governance of a local nature that allows to tackle the processes of inequality.