The social role of urban law

Abstract

The ideas presented in this paper are intended to reflect on the role, responsibility or, in terms of the Royal Spanish Academy, the moral obligation of urban law to regulate the city's ordering its balanced, sustainable development and equity, avoiding the marginalization, segregation and exclusion. To this end, the authorities must prevent urbanization from being a territorial expression of an exclusive and predatory urban order. The regular exercise of planning power must promote the right to urbanization, as a right of collective action, a corollary of the right to a decent habitat, consist in the progressive satisfaction of the urban and housing needs of the people of the city, especially who can not solve them with their own resources. In urbanization processes, they should tend to progressively satisfy the right to live in dignity on served or urbanized land, as a corollary of the respect by the public authorities of the human right to the city, consisting in the use and enjoyment of these within the principles of sustainability, democracy, equity and social justice, and the observance of guiding principles such as the social function of property, democratic management of the city and access to land.