Abstract, Urban Mobility and Politics in Mexico City The Case of the Frente Amplio contra la Supervía

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Urban Mobility and Politics in Mexico City
The Case of the Frente Amplio contra la Supervía
by Oscar Sosa López


Study of the struggle of a social movement, the Frente Amplio contra la Supervía, to stop the construction of an urban toll road in the southwestern end of Mexico City reveals that investments in transportation assumed to benefit the larger public are in fact creating new landscapes of infrastructural and democratic exclusion. Examination of the forms of citizen mobilization, alliances among diverse actors, and the role of accountability institutions as spaces for democratic experimentation suggests that struggles against large infrastructure projects allow citizens and the state to redraw the limits of authoritarianism and the meaning of sustainability and democracy in the city.

Abstract, "New Forms of Environmental Governance in São Paulo: Implications for Human Rights" by LaDawn Haglund

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New Forms of Environmental Governance in São Paulo: Implications for Human Rights 
by LaDawn Haglund

The democratic transition and constitutional reforms in Brazil raised hopes that critical environmental challenges and egregious social deficits could finally be remedied through law, but political and legal legacies, fragmentation among actors, and disarticulation between and within institutions and between the state and citizens have complicated this transformation. Examination of the emerging role of the courts and the law in promoting social rights and environmental protection in the water and sanitation sectors in São Paulo reveals how long-standing urban problems are reified or altered through legal means. It also shows that ongoing challenges have prompted a search for new, proactive strategies of coordination, tested old assumptions about state/society relationships, and provoked broader conversations about difficult socioeconomic and political questions at the heart of creating sustainable, just societies.