Buen Vivir and Subaltern Cosmopolitan Legality in Urban Cultural Governance and Redevelopment Frameworks: The Equitable Right to Diverse Iterations of Culture in the City and a New Urban Legal Anthropological Approach

Abstract

In the international development sphere, critical theorists question the prevailing development approaches imposed by Western and Eurocentric dominant legal and development frameworks for their failure to respect the diversity of knowledges and cultures of the spaces and countries that are the subject of development discussions. I suggest that alternative proposed approaches and reactions to development — namely the notions of buen vivir and subaltern cosmopolitanism, as viewed prevalently throughout the work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos — carry potential for application at the urban municipal redevelopment context where dominant urban redevelopment strategies in cities such as Toronto currently rely on particular iterations of “culture” and its commodification in order to attain sought after global creative city status that tends towards gentrification and can function to the detriment, exclusion, and marginalization of the diversity of knowledges and ways of being within the city space.

Keywords: Santos; Buen Viver; Critical Legal Studies; Urban Redevelopment

JEL Classification: K11. K33, K20