Colau represents world cities at UN in New York

Barcelona mayor, Ada Colau, represented the world’s large cities yesterday in New York, at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, held at the United Nations. Colau presented the ‘Cities for Housing’ declaration, which calls on national and state authorities to provide cities with more resources and powers to combat housing speculation and gentrification.

Signed by such world cities as New York, London, Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Seoul and Amsterdam, the declaration’s ultimate aim is for large cities to become more “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” Among the demands made by the cities in the declaration is increasing municipal cooperation, more legal and fiscal control of the housing market, and major investment to improve access to rented accommodation.

The text of the declaration read out by Colau identifies local governments as the provider of public services “most sensitive” to citizens’ everyday needs.

The declaration also says that such things as a lack of national and state funding, market deregulation, the growing power of global corporations, and increasing competition for scarce real estate, cause “serious distortions in their social fabric, and put the goal of ensuring equitable, inclusive, and just cities at risk.”