UNESCO ‘Creative City Network’

UNESCO ‘Creative City Network’

Subject – Art and Culture

Context – UNESCO picks Srinagar as creative city

Concept –

• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has picked Srinagar among 49 cities as part of the creative city network under the Crafts and Folk Arts category.
• The process of nomination of Srinagar under the UNESCO ‘Creative City Network’ was undertaken and funded under the World Bank-funded Jhelum Tawi Flood Recovery Project.

About UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) –

• The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) was created in 2004 to promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development.
• The 246 cities which currently make up this network work together towards a common objective: placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of their development plans at the local level and cooperating actively at the international level.
• The Network covers seven creative fields: Crafts and Folk Arts, Media Arts, Film, Design, Gastronomy, Literature and Music.
• Every year, UNESCO seeks applications for various cities across the globe for putting them under its UCCN project. The applications in India are routed through the Ministry of Culture.
• UCCN tag would not only give global recognition to the Srinagar city but also help it in international funding, tie-ups with craft universities and pitching craft as a product.

As of November, 2019, there are five Indian cities in UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) as follows:

• Jaipur-Crafts and Folk Arts (2015).
• Varanasi-Creative city of Music (2015).
• Chennai-Creative city of Music (2017).
• Mumbai – Film (2019).
• Hyderabad – Gastronomy (2019).

After Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Varanasi and Jaipur, Srinagar is the sixth Indian city to achieve this distinction.

UNESCO designated 49 cities as part of the creative cities network. With this, the total number of creative cities in the world has reached 295 across 90 countries.

World Cities Day

• The United Nations General Assembly has designated the 31st of October as World Cities Day.
• The theme for World Cities Day, 2021 is, “Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience” and coincided with the opening of the UN Climate Change Conference COP 26.

Right to the city

• The right to the city is an idea and a slogan first proposed by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le Droit à la Ville.
• According to Lefebvre, the Right to the City is the right of all urban inhabitants, not just citizens, to participate in and appropriate urban space and resources.
  • This means that all urban inhabitants should have a role in decision-making regarding urban space and be able to access, occupy and use urban space.
• Right to the City is a “common rather than an individual right” that seeks to transform cities by the exercise of collective power “to reshape the processes of urbanization.”
• Since the adoption of the World Charter on the Right to the City in 2005, the idea has also gained a lot of traction in various international forums.
• It became the linchpin driving the New Urban Agenda adopted in the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) held in Quito, Ecuador in 2016.
  • UN-Habitat partners with national and local governments, academia, civil society and the private sector in the implementation and monitoring of the commitment made under the New Urban Agenda and SDG 11.
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights commits to social justice through the promotion, defense and fulfillment of all human rights related to habitat, including the Human Right to Adequate Housing, Land and the Right to the City in every region of the world.
• The Right to the City is the right of all inhabitants (present and future, permanent and temporary) to inhabit, use, occupy, produce, transform, govern and enjoy cities, towns and human settlements that are just, inclusive, safe, sustainable and democratic, defined as common goods for enjoying life with dignity and peace. The right to the city further implies responsibilities on governments and people to claim, defend, and promote this right.
• This right claims for:
  • the social function of the city;
  • quality public spaces;
  • sustainable and inclusive rural-urban linkages;
  • inclusive economies;
  • inclusive citizenship;
  • enhanced political participation;
  • non-discrimination;
  • gender equality; and
  • cultural diversity
• The ‘Right to the City’ does not mean the guarantee of any public service or facility to the unauthorized colonies in a city. It guarantees the common goods and services which are essential for the quality of life.