Urban Front manifesto v.0.92
01.
The fundamental social and environmental problems of contemporary urbanization are a product of the dominant dogma that promotes endless growth and wealth concentration into the hands of the few. We cannot confront these problems without defying the dominant processes that give rise to them. URBAN FRONT seeks to confront its causes with a progressive anti-capitalist approach. Our aim is to radical rethink, re-design, and transform urban life towards the amelioration and ultimate eradication of structural social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental inequities.
02.
The urban problems of today cannot be approached within a single disciplinary or theoretical framework. URBAN FRONT’s objective is to blur knowledge silos for designing relational forms of acting, trans-disciplinary knowledge structures, dialectical, grassroots, historical, and geographical materialist processes for socio-spatial transformation.
03.
The empowerment of an organized inhabitants is foundational for our approaches. The embeddedness of political action within social movements is axiomatic. URBAN FRONT is committed to cultivating active relationships with the popular base of democratic governments, elected officials, as well as the neighborhood, cultural, labor, and urban social movements that struggle to better the living conditions of all.
04.
Cultivating a sustainable and unalienated relation to nature is essential for human survival. Temperatures and toxicity in the environment are on the rise, and heavy pollution is wrecking the qualities of air, water, and soil, severely threatening all forms of life. Increasing problems of waste disposal, loss of habitat diversity, deterioration of the food supply, deforestation and severe droughts need to be critically confronted. This is where the politics of negation and affirmative ecological politics take precedence; and where URBAN FRONT pledges to develop new knowledge, strategies, and tactics to support cities in their essential role to recuperate the health of our planet.
05.
We cannot imagine a better future if equity and justice of gender and race are not first achieved. Inequalities related to social reproduction and representation globally manifest in the low remuneration, diminished participation in politics, labor markets and access to medical care, education and training of women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and persons with any skin color other than white. One of the primary objectives of URBAN FRONT is to pursue the design and implementation of intersectional structures that support the broadest possible range of identities and organized in opposition to imposed ideological forms from a single race and gender.
06.
Our urban practice is redefined inside the active dimensions of the peoples struggles for justice. Expert knowledge is crucial as long as it is considered side-by-side peoples knowledge, transcending the boundaries of formal education. Urban Front is committed to co-create spaces for all forms of knowledge and provide free open-access to it in the urban commons.
07.
New technological advancements have the potential to ease the burden of exploitative human labor and free time for everyone to pursue their passions, and by doing so, demand the creation of new urban spaces for emancipatory human interaction. URBAN FRONT insists that existing and forthcoming technologies are repurposed primarily to produce social good.
08.
Democracy requires the construction of mechanisms that share decision making power and resources with coordinated forms of popular administration. URBAN FRONT is working to create scalable public-communitarian partnerships to undo the neoliberal dogma that has permitted for-profit corporations to plunder vast amounts of public wealth under the name of public-private partnerships.
09.
There is more money in the world today than there has ever been; nevertheless, the imposition of austerity measures continues to plague urban politics across the globe. A new politics of urban-fiscal redistribution should take precedence to support radical visions for a massive reinvestment in the public purpose of urbanization. URBAN FRONT advocates for redistributive politics that value the public good over any form of private profit.
10.
Neoliberalism relies on urban growth at the control of predatory and speculative finance industries. These industries continuously transform our cities by coercing economic and fiscal incentives that favor profitable investment over the social good. URBAN FRONT is developing alternative economic and financial models that prioritize social solidarity, collectivity, equality, community control, transparency, and environmental responsibility.
11.
For URBAN FRONT, access to an adequate home is a right that every human must possess. A home is not a commodity. Helping cities take the production of housing out of the control of predatory financiers and speculators is an elemental task. URBAN FRONT's approach to the housing crisis is to innovate non-speculative and limited-equity housing models and initiatives that re-imagine homes as sites that support the creation of commons, collective production, cooperative ownership, economic emancipation, and democratic organization.