Violations of the right to the city for women with disabilities in peripheral rural communities in Hungary

Abstract

The denial of the right to the city for various social groups is well documented in academic discourses. However, these debates lack sufficient attention to intersecting axes of social disadvantage. Furthermore, most of the relevant studies apply definitions of the right to the city that are based on urban inhabitance. In Hungary, and in other Central and Eastern European countries, where urban-rural inequalities are still obvious manifestations of uneven spatial development, we should also concentrate on the right to the city of those who inhabit rural communities. In this study, we address the following research question: how does the right to the city (as a universal human right) apply to rural women who experience multiple social disadvantage? We argue that within the framework of the concept of the right to the city, people's basic needs and the fact that certain social groups cannot exercise their right to fundamental urban resources should not be downplayed. We also argue that the curtailment of the right to the city is not universal among rural dwellers, and this disadvantage does not affect each of these people to the same extent and in the same ways. There is a considerable diversity in how the limitation of the right to urban resources manifests itself and how disadvantaged rural residents experience it (due to e.g. intersecting axes of oppression/identities). Our empirical study is based on interviews conducted with 32 disabled or chronically ill women living in Hungarian rural areas. The focus is on their perceptions of their everyday lives and reflections on their problems regarding the access to urban resources and services. According to the interviews, urban-rural divide and patriarchal and ableist power relations contribute to the violations of disabled women's right to the city.

Localizing new social risks

“…Their analysis shows that urban centres more adequately supply services to satisfy for need for reconciliation, compared to low-inhabited localities such as rural communities. The same finding characterises the study of Fabula and Timár (2018): framed in the right to the city debate, they show how being a woman in the rural periphery of Hungary deprives from the access to social services, which especially in the case of disabled or chronically ill persons further magnify their condition of vulnerability (Fabula and Timár 2018).…”

“…The local variation in the profiles mostly exposed to NSRs is the first analytical dimension that emerges by applying the social vulnerability approach to urban studies. Research has identified several profiles that might be exposed to NSRs: households living in a condition of temporary poverty or financial strain (Revilla, 2018), women with care-work reconciliation unsolved problems (Jensen, 2017;Watt 2018;Langford et al, 2019), chronically ill or disabled people (Fabula and Timár 2018), the young with low-asset family background (Hochstenbach and Boterman 2017), low-income older people living in gentrifying areas (Buffel and Philipson 2019). For these profiles, the satisfaction of basic needs becomes increasingly difficult as they are located in a place that magnifies their vulnerable condition.…”

Toward a Conceptual Model for Public Space Assessment With Focus on the Right to the City Discourse Using the Fuzzy-Delphi and Dematel Methods

“…Urban planners and urban designers should facilitate the attraction of all sexual and socioeconomic groups to a public space (Ducre 2018). A pedestrian space, due to its high level of publicity, must provide a platform to ensure the presence of different groups in the space (Bolt 2017, Fabula andTimár 2018). In such a public space, the entry or exit must be at the sole discretion of the citizens (Sandercock 1998, Fainstein 2006).…”

Schelhaas, B., Ferretti, F., Novaes, A.R. and Schmidt di Friedberg, M. (eds.): Decolonising and Internationalising Geography: Essays in the History of Contested Science

“…In my view, similar studies would have much relevance in many countries. For example, in Hungary, research on the geographies of disability has just started recently (Fabula, Sz. and Timár, J.…”