32) Human rights are universally broken.

The universality in human rights implies that, irrespective of citizenship or territorial legislation, people have basic rights that others should respect. And yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that people’s human rights are universally violated. What causes this? Those who hold a tragic or historical vision of the world will believe that while progress is possible, perfection is not.

While it originated as a comprehensive concept, the universality of human rights became such a popular phrase that it is now used to justify almost any agenda. People mention human rights regardless of what they try to promote.

Rights are described in vague, aspirational terms which can be interpreted in multiple ways. Let’s take the freedom to build and raze and displace. We live at a time when the claim to human rights is both taken for granted and regularly disregarded. The central idea of human rights is that they are rights that people have, and enjoy even without any specific legislation. Does this idea make our talk loose? The inclination to rely on legislative rather than design solutions assumes (unintentionally, most likely) that first, the design of the physical environment has no bearing on the well-being of the city. The problem with this model is that it’s unsustainable globally. It is unaffordable globally. It is unrealistic globally.

Laws solve problems by a process of analysis whilst design solves problems by synthesis. So, what can design do to help? Let’s start with the question of global social sustainability. Many believe that international human-rights laws are among of our greatest moral achievements. But there is little evidence that they are effective. Let’s take climate change: we know that summit after summit is not going to reduce greenhouse gas emission. What we can see is that by transferring technological knowledge into architecture, we are actually beginning to reduce the eco footprint.

In the world of Zabrisky a right can be the power of the will or the will of power. And that is the key: it is all about power.

The architecture of the global space, which is largely unregulated, not subject to the rule of law, and in which people may act free of constraint will most benefit the powerful and those who have the most power to operate in this space without constraint. Because it has never happened yet that many, many people enjoy power without having money.

The label human rights is misleading because it lays claim to the idea that these rights are common to all human beings. There are human-rights issues that are little-explored, that may be unconventional, experimental, or challenging, and which arise from diverse disciplinary traditions. These necessitate architecture becoming more inquiring and less prone to ready-made answers.

David Harvey reminds us that the right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources; it is the right to change ourselves by changing the city. This transformation depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. This starts from the wrong assumption that we owe nothing to others unless we have actually harmed them. This may necessitate new alliances among individuals, communities, at country level, and internationally and require a new role for architecture. There is a line between having a right and not having it. That line is movable and permeable.

Difficulties for some and injustices for others force them to work harder, to think more, to learn more, to speculate on both the past and future of the problem of contravening the human rights of others. Protecting the human rights of others is not out of our control. These are problems entirely of our own making. Whatever we can break, we can also fix. All human rights can be relevant throughout the design process from sketching a house to living in it.