Pathways to urban equality: trans-local solidarities within the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights

The actions of diverse urban reform coalitions, driven by grassroots organizations, federated networks and social movements, have generated new articulations of urban knowledge and practice. Working collaboratively across urban stakeholders, movements have negotiated diverse forms of expertise, highlighting the contested epistemologies at the heart of urban interventions. This paper explores the work of one such urban reform coalition operating at regional scale – the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) – a network of grassroots community organizations, NGOs and professionals pursuing community-led development across Asian cities. It draws on rich reflections from founders and members on the shifting strategies deployed over time to build a trans-local urban reform coalition, including the grounded tools, collective learning processes and critical emotions informing how actions are undertaken. The paper reflects on how the circulation of knowledges across scales has been vital in consolidating and extending regional solidarities as a route to urban equality.