Urban futures: Making cities work for people
ODI hosted the first cross-institute event, Urban Futures: Making cities work for people, on Friday
12th June. Four different programmes and projects across ODI contributed key research to develop
three distinct sessions throughout the day looking at inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities.
Session 1: Towards inclusive cities: improving the living conditions of slum dwellers
The event opened with a pre-recorded keynote speech by Aromar Revi, Director of the Indian
Institute for Human Settlements, to kick-start the first session, hosted by ODI’s Development
Progress project. He initiated the discussion with a focus on the event theme ’making cities work for
people and reiterated the importance of inversing the age-old mantra that drove people to work for
cities.
Following the keynote address, the audience was privy to exclusive research findings from case
studies carried out in Peru, Thailand and India. Paula Lucci, Research Fellow, ODI, first provided the
urban context for the Development Progress project, looking at housing conditions as well as access
to services being needed for 1 billion people, and explained the rationale behind the case study in
Peru.
In the Peruvian study, the factors underpinning slum improvement were the expansion of clean
water access, sanitation, electricity services and housing programmes; pressure from neighbourhood
organisations, and household investments in housing improvements. The challenges included:
persistence of urban informality; overcoming the clientelist behaviour of the state; inequality in
access to opportunities; and addressing weaknesses of information. The lessons emerged as follows:
public policies aimed at improving slum conditions should work to strengthen community
participation in slum upgrading activities; political commitment can push rapid expansion of access
to basic services and housing in informal settlements; a preventative approach that promotes access
to land and affordable housing is also needed; and finally, strong urban planning capacities,
particularly at the local level are needed to deal effectively with the challenges of urbanisation.
Tanvi Bhatkal, Research Officer, ODI, went on to deliver the findings of the Thailand case study,
which investigated community driven development in slums, looking at the extent of the
improvements in living conditions for Thailand’s slum dwellers, particularly as a result of Baan
Mankong. Key findings of the study demonstrated that the living conditions of slum dwellers is
rooted in: putting communities at the centre of the slum upgrading efforts; facilitating cooperation
between different actors and flexibility in design; institutional and funding arrangements; all of
which contribute to the success of participatory slum upgrading. Alongside slum upgrading,
preventative polices are needed and reaching the poorest and leaving no one behind remains a key
challenge.
Susan Nicolai, Head of Development Progress, ODI, proceeded with framing the India case study in
the context of multidimensional progress, not only examining physical conditions, but encompassing
the dimensions of the Development Progress project: political voice, material well-being, and
environment.
The case study found some valuable lessons from the City of Ahmedabad, such as extending services
to slum communities, regardless of their tenure, is an important step in integrating them into the
urban community, and cooperation between civil society and government in planning and
implementing policies can contribute to improved housing and access to services for poor urban
people. The study also found that creating incentives for partnerships between the government,
private sector and civil society is a key part of effective town planning. Leveraging limited public
funds to access alternative financing for urban infrastructure can play an important role in urban
development, although well-intentioned, top-down urban policies can exclude poor people and
damage relations between the government and civil society. Inequities in access to services and
opportunities and increasing centralised approaches to implementing urban policy and increasing
social tension remain a challenge.
For the final part of this session, David Satterthwaite, Senior Fellow, IIED, Eugenie Birch, Professor of
Urban Research, Department of City and Regional Planning University of Pennsylvania, Chair of the
UN-HABITAT's World Urban Campaign, Susan Parnell, Professor, African Centre for Cities joined
Claire Melamed, Director of Growth, Poverty and Inequality Programme at ODI, to brainstorm policy
ideas to improve living conditions of slum dwellers.
The panel addressed questions on the ‘hierarchy of progress’ and were asked: what factors were
necessary and in which order; what is the most important thing we need to do? The panel then
discussed and explored ways in which communities and governments together can play a role in
improving living conditions through housing development processes, acting as a tool for people to
work together, saving money, make decisions together and sit as partners. It was raised that priority
actions are a question of context and leadership and there is a need to hone in on appropriate
actions at both the individual and neighbourhood levels.
Session 2: Towards safe cities
The first afternoon session, ‘Towards safe cities’, took the form of a conversation on urban violence
between academics and practitioners, facilitated by Sara Pantuliano, Director of the Humanitarian
Policy Group at ODI. The session was co-organised by ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group and Politics
and Governance programmes.
Jaideep Gupte, a Research Fellow with IDS, warned of the dangers of territorialising violence, as it
could lead to insufficient attention on rural violence. Jaideep spoke extensively about Mumbai, a
place where counselling can prove more effective than jobs in reintegrating young offenders through
reducing their sense of entitlement.
Caroline Moser, Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester, drew on forty years of
experience working on urban issues in her remarks. Taking a historical approach, Caroline
highlighted how violence was not always considered a development issue. A key question Caroline
raised was: how can communities empower themselves to challenge structural causes of violence?
Gary Slutkin, a physician by training, explained the public health model that his organisation, Cure
Violence, employs to prevent violence. Gary explained that violence can be combatted through
social norms; Cure Violence puts this into practice by hiring former gang members to intervene in
communities and stop violence erupting.
Conor Foley, an author, journalist & humanitarian aid worker, questioned whether the humanitarian
paradigm was still fit-for-purpose. He argued that many humanitarian terms, such as displacement
and International Humanitarian Law, have been shown to be outdated when looking at today's
conflicts.
Session 3: Towards resilient and sustainable cities: filling key gaps in knowledge
The final session of the day was hosted by ODI’s Climate and Environment Programme (CEP) and
drew on cutting edge research undertaken by ODI’s Adaptation and Resilience team and CDKN to
present key knowledge gaps and future directions for research on urban resilience.
After opening remarks from the Chair, Jane Clark, Head of Leaning: Climate Change, DFID,, Dr Aditya
Bahadur, Senior Research Officer, Adaption and Resilience,ODI and Dr Hilary Thornton, Managing
Director, Verulam Associates, presented findings from research undertaken for the Rockefeller
Foundation funded Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN). The findings helped
outline a research agenda on urban resilience by demonstrating the manner in which current
literature on the topic does not adequately reflect the reality on the ground. The findings were
derived from 65 interviews undertaken with policy makers in 13 cities across 7 Asian countries. Dr
Cristina Rumbaitis Del Rio, Senior Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation followed Aditya and
Hilary and responded to this discussion by describing how her organisation sees resilience as a broad
paradigm encompassing both, technical and social components. She also highlighted how the
Rockefeller Foundation has a very broad interpretation of resilience and understands it to be
concept that can be deployed against economic upheaval, infrastructure failures and cyber attacks –
not just climate change.
The audience had many questions for the panel, including one on the role of the private sector in
making cities resilient. Cristina answered this by explaining how she had found that small and
medium enterprises (SMEs) that work at a more local scale are usually better at building resilience
rather than big businesses. She said that the large businesses will need to feel substantial regulatory
pressure before taking urban resilience seriously. Aditya responded to this question by
distinguishing between the formal (big businesses) and informal private sector (e.g. builders and
masons) and underlined that these two sub-sets of the private sector need to incentivised by using
different sets of levers. Aditya also highlighted the importance of building a body of evidence on the
manner in which resilience attracts jobs and helps grow the economy to encourage the ‘formal
private sector’ to take urban resilience more seriously.
If you had 1 million pounds for research on urban resilience what would you spend it on?
This discussion provided answers to the question in the title by presenting insights from a gap
analysis of research on urban resilience consolidated through interviews with practitioners and
policy makers on three continents about knowledge needs for unlocking urban resilience. Aditya
outlined the nature of research being undertaken as part of CDKN’s research program on this theme
by presenting research questions that needed investigation in three areas: the physical, financial,
and social. The physical questions included modalities of ensuring climate compatible infrastructural
development in areas where regulatory control is weak. Another unanswered question was on the
role of peri-urban areas in ensuring urban resilience. The key financial research gaps included the
need for understanding how innovative funding mechanisms could be devised for delivering climate
compatible development (CCD) in cities, as well as the lack of a clear understanding of the financial
incentives for investing in urban resilience. Finally, Aditya highlighted gaps in understanding key
social questions that included a lack of clear insight on impacts of slow-onset disasters and the
extensive risk posed by climate change on the physical and psychological health of urban
citizens. Another key gap in this cluster was around understanding the manner in which CCD
initiatives can support the empowerment of women and marginalised groups.
Representatives of two teams of researchers who received grants from CDKN’s research program to
answersome of these questions then presented insights from their research. First, Garima Jain,
Senior Associate, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, shared her team’s research on the social
and economic impacts resettlement and relocation as a risk reduction strategy. She highlighted the
need to carefully consider costs and benefits of urban resettlement programmes as resettlement
may decrease risk, but can also increase poverty and vulnerability – for those that move as well as
those that stay behind. Rita Lambert, Teaching Fellow, Development Planning Unit, UCL, was the
final speaker and outlined her research on urban ‘risk traps’ in Lima, Peru. She outlined the manner
in which recurring environmental hazards deplete livelihoods and assets as each disaster makes it
harder to recover from the next. Rita went on to outline how the research that her team is
undertaking can help communities and governments break out of the vicious cycle of disaster risk
and strengthen long-term resilience.