It's too easy to overlay an urbanist narrative onto the past month's protests in Turkish and Brazilian cities. It's more important to see how the protests contradict even some pro-urban discourses such as "the prosperity of cities", and even more important to reform the world's police forces to make protests more effective democratic instruments, and less tragic, as Kerwin Datu argues.
Forced evictions are usually illegal, yet they are increasingly routine for many governments, assisted by international institutions. Rather than helping governments justify evictions, institutions need to steer governments towards true 'voluntarism'.
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It seems too easy to search amongst the causes of the protests for nothing more than confirmation of one's own pet interests.
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
