Architectures of inequality? Employing a human rights perspective to study the built environment of the city of York, United Kingdom

At the end of his visit to the United Kingdom in 2018, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights asserted that: "[in] the world's fifth largest economy... a fifth of the population live in poverty" (UNSR Statement 2018). His conclusions are underscored by reports of many local civil society organisations (CSOs).

Building on these observations, this research investigates the question, 'to what extent is an 'architecture of poverty and inequality' evident in the public spaces of the cities of York and Leeds, and what implications does this have for the realisation of human rights?' To answer this, the study aims to: a) identify the ways in which inequality and poverty are manifest in the built environment of York and Leeds's public spaces; b) examine legal, social, economic, political or administrative conditions that produce such environments; c) consider the extent to which the built environment visibilises, or invisibilises, poverty and inequality in urban space and to explore the impact of this on the realisation of socio-economic rights.

Central to the study is a qualitative, mixed method approach to data collection. The project is anchored in two research methods - semi-structured interviewing and ethnographic participant observations - analysed through a socio-legal lens. The provisional choice of a comparative study, whilst not without difficulties, lends itself to analysis of two richly diverse urban environments. The project is guided by its public spaces of enquiry to identify categories of participants: particularly individuals using the space for work, as a home, as shelter in the absence of a home, and as tourists, as well as CSOs and public administrations. Urban sites that are both central and further out, frequently and infrequently used, visited as attractions and as everyday amenities will be identified for observations.

Several strands of literature have inspired this research. Urban public space has produced a strong scholarship, occupying the fields of urban geography as well as sociology and political science (Bodnar 2015; Sengupta 2017). Of particular interest here is a facet of geographical study concerned with urban securitisation practices (Raco 2003; Licht 2017). This research is characterised by an uneasiness at seemingly inherent processes of othering: the project engages with discussion of hostile architecture as a physical expression of an exclusionary landscape and explores interpretations of such architecture as forms of "environmental social control" (Petty 2016). Underpinning enquiries is attentiveness to emerging moves to recast Lefebvre's influential 'right to the city' as an operational human right. Advancing the right to the city from conceptualisation to operationalisation requires in depth examination of socio-economic rights, a persistently understudied area of international human rights law (Grant 2012). Whilst everyday life and the built environment has long been studied by geographers, direct discussion of socio-economic rights is underdeveloped. Thus, taking a rights-based approach to this project is both innovative and illuminating; interpreting the obligations, remedies and gendered aspects of rights such as housing, food and sanitation directly in relation to the built environment.

The changing role of cities in the international legal order is emerging as a substantial area of examination for legal scholars: this project may contribute knowledge to understanding how cities can positively and negatively impact the realisation of human rights for those living within their limits. Impact may also occur outside of academia, particularly in the area of urban administrations and (grassroots) CSOs. In seeking to identify the ways in which the construction of public space can influence human rights, it may be possible to advance an understanding of good practice in planning and decision-making to produce truly 'public' urban spaces.