The right to the city and the urban-rural linkages. Community participation in the metropolitan area of Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas

Abstract

The expansion of cities produces effects that generate inequalities in the access to housing and basic services. In metropolitan areas, the most affected populations are those in the urban peripheries and rural settlements. In this context, the right to the city is an instrument to fight against these inequalities, and when speaking of complex fabrics such as metropolitan areas, where the urban and the rural intermingle, the right to the city provides an approach that conceives the urban-rural continuum. Based on the debate around the right to the city and urban-rural linkages, this study focuses on the context of Chiapas, Mexico, where access to water is a struggle that increases with the effects of urban expansion, affecting rural populations to a greater extent, but they are also a factor that triggers processes that promote the participation of communities. From a qualitative analysis, this study compares two forms of participation carried out by local communities in Tuxtla Gutierrez Metropolitan Area that allow the population to manage actions to improve their quality of life. The objective is to analyze the forms of participation that these types of organizations promote and what is the potential and limitations they face in strengthening urban-rural linkages and in moving forward the right to the city. The study identifies factors such as the structure of the organizations and the diversity of its members that limit or promote transformations in the relationships, as well as factors in the relationships within the community and between the community and other actors that limit the scope of the processes.