Meeting the challenge of risk-sensitive and resilient urban development in sub-Saharan Africa: Directions for future research and practice (original) (raw)
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Africa’s urban risk and resilience
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
At the heart of the papers in this Special Issue is the call for research and practice to move to understand and act on the direct and indirect interlinkages between urban development and risk accumulation processes; a broader conception of risk on a continuum from everyday to extreme events and a critical view of urban risk governance as a project that implicates multiple formal and informal actors at difference scales. Out of this focus emerges a research frontier that demands sustained, detailed studies of the links between multi-faceted and multi-scalar development processes and risk but also the re-thinking of scale and jurisdiction as ordering concepts; a stronger understanding of the linkages between environmental / public health risks and small and extreme disasters, and relative changes in manifestations of these forms of risk and in their social differentiation; and better theorisation of governance innovations. For practice, the issue stresses the over-riding need to move beyond a narrow focus on hazard or disaster events and the immediate actors involved to engage a much wider set of actors in integrated planning processes; to develop data to enable holistic policy-making and to build on the emergence of demand-led planning to re-frame the practices of risk-sensitive and resilient urban development.
Towards Risk-Sensitive and Transformative Urban Development in Sub Saharan Africa
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Risk-sensitive urban development is required to reduce accumulated risk and to better consider risk when planning new developments. To deliver a sustainable city for all requires a more frank and comprehensive focus on procedure: On who makes decisions, under which frameworks, based upon what kind of data or knowledge, and with what degree and direction of accountability? Acting on these procedural questions is the promise of transformative urban development. This paper explores the status of risk sensitive and transformative urban development and the scope for transition towards these components of sustainability in urban sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of diverse city cases: Karonga (Malawi), Ibadan (Nigeria), Niamey (Niger) and Nairobi (Kenya). The paper draws from a 3-year research and capacity building programme called Urban Africa: Risk Knowledge that aims to address gaps in data, understandings and capacity to break cycles of risk accumulation. A common analytical framewo...
Africa's Urban Risk and Resilience (International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction)
The literature on disaster risk and its reduction in Africa’s urban centres remains limited, despite evidence of disaster risks increasing with urban growth. This Special Issue brings together new synthetic reviews, detailed empirical case studies and practitioner and expert commentary to highlight the multiple ways in which risk and urban development are co-evolving in the region. It broadens understanding about the nature, scale and distribution of urban risks, examining relationships between everyday and disaster risks across scales. Papers in the Issue also interrogate the role of governance processes in driving risks, including strong recognition of the role of social institutions where formal governance structures are incomplete, and the underlying knowledge and power relationships that shape urban risk management. Potential learning from innovation is discussed in the light of the rise of resilience paradigms in urban development as well as the ongoing embedding of international agreements in local agendas that offer the potential to drive forward risk-sensitive urban development pathways.
A B S T R A C T The main urban issue that sub-Saharan Africa is facing is rapid growth in its urban population without the urban governance structures in place that can meet their responsibilities and manage the change. This has created very large deficits in infrastructure and service provision which exposes much of the urban population to high levels of risk. Without competent, effective and accountable urban governments, it is not possible to tap the great potential that cities have for supporting good living conditions and good health. This paper examines both the scale of urban change and the development challenge facing sub-Saharan Africa's urban areas and the possible implications on risk. It describes how a substantial proportion of sub-Saharan Africa's national (and urban) population lives in small and intermediate size urban centres (and thus not in rural areas or large cities) and considers what we know about risk in these urban centres and the implications for development. The paper suggests that within the region's urban population, inadequacies in provision for basic infrastructure and services are usually larger, the smaller the urban centre. Most small urban centres in the region have local governments with very little capacity or funding to fulfil their responsibilities for risk reducing infrastructure and services. Of these, the inadequacies in provision for water and sanitation are the best documented. But in some instances, provision for water and sanitation is so poor in large cities that the proportion of their inhabitants lacking adequate provision is as high as those living in small urban centres.
Urban resilience building in fast-growing African cities
2019
Small-and medium-sized cities and towns in sub-Saharan Africa are growing fast and accumulating risks. Local governments seek to build the resilience of their city in conditions of complex interdependent urban systems and gaps in data and information. Technical and financial capacity issues often lead to them resorting to external expertise, which shifts the decision-making power away from the citizenry and elected leaders. To capacitate cities to lead their own resilience-building processes, new decision-support tools are required that can operate on data that are good enough and can enhance inclusive decision-making processes and local ownership. This briefing draws from the experience of the City Resilience Action Planning (CityRAP) Tool developed by UN-Habitat, including within the Urban Africa Risk Knowledge (Urban ARK) programme. The tool was implemented in 20 cities spread over nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa between 2015 and 2018.
African Urbanisation and Urbanism: Implications for risk accumulation and reduction
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2017
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Area
Many African towns and cities face a range of hazards, which can best be described as representing a "spectrum of risk" of events that can cause death, illness or injury, and impoverishment. Yet despite the growing numbers of people living in African urban centres, the extent and relative severity of these different risks is poorly understood. This paper provides a rationale for using a spectrum of methods to address this spectrum of risk, and demonstrates the utility of mixed-methods approaches in planning for resilience. It describes activities undertaken in a wide-ranging multicountry programme of research, which use multiple approaches to gather empirical data on risk, in order to build a stronger evidence base and provide a more solid base for planning and investment. It concludes that methods need to be chosen in regard to social, political economic, biophysical and hydrogeological context, while also recognising the different levels of complexity and institutional capacity in different urban centres. The paper concludes that as well as the importance of taking individual contexts into account, there are underlying methodological principlesbased on multidisciplinary expertise and multi-faceted and collaborative research endeavours that can inform a range of related approaches to understanding urban risk in sub-Saharan Africa and break the cycle of risk accumulation.