A threat to life and livelihoods: examining the effects of the first wave of COVID-19 on health and wellbeing in Bengaluru and Patna slums

Taking advantage of our existing dataset of 6,721 slum households in two Indian cities, we undertook six rounds of follow-up phone interviews on the impact of COVID-19 between July and November 2020 with three key informants in each of 40 diverse slums. These cities showed contrasting health effects resulting from the first major wave of the COVID-19 pandemic – no deaths and nearly no illnesses were reported in Patna, while there was widespread low-intensity sickness and a cluster of deaths in Bengaluru. We found no clear pattern in the links between outbreaks and city or neighbourhood characteristics. Livelihood effects, however, were devastating across both cities. All but a few slum dwellers lost their jobs for several months and survived by cutting back on essentials, incurring loans, liquidating assets, and seeking help from neighbours. Government assistance, generous in the early part of the lockdown, dwindled rapidly. Many will likely become chronically poor.

How does community-managed infrastructure scale up from rural to urban? An example of co-production in community water projects in Northern Pakistan

This paper examines the role of participation, co-production and community management in a random sample of 50 rural and urban water systems under the Water and Sanitation Extension Programme (WASEP) in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. It looks at the role of an NGO (the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat) in co-production, and how this model of community-based water management (CBWM) contributes to the discussion in the literature. Specifically, the paper considers whether the largely rural WASEP model can be successfully scaled up and scaled out to urban centres, drawing on evidence from a survey of over 2,500 rural and urban households. The findings illustrate the importance of participation in the successful delivery of water systems. However, higher levels of rural participation are related to specifically rural features, including the smaller size and more limited diversity of communities. The paper concludes that new methods may be required for the transfer of CBWM to urban centres with much larger, more diverse and growing populations.

Excluded communities and participatory land-use planning: experience from informal Roma settlements in Serbia

Citizen participation in the planning and decision-making process in the European post-socialist context is much debated. Still, the involvement of excluded communities in the urban planning process remains understudied. This paper presents and discusses the application of an innovative participatory approach designed to ensure active involvement of an excluded ethnic minority, the Roma community, in the process of formulating and adopting land-use plans for informal settlements in Serbia. By analysing the development of land-use plans in 11 municipalities, we observe that the applied participatory approach enhanced the inhabitants’ active participation and helped build consensus on the planned solution between the key actors. Findings also suggested that further work with citizens, capacity building of planners and administration, and secured financial mechanisms are needed to move citizen participation in urban planning beyond the limited statutory requirements.

The value of participatory urban policy councils: engaging actors through policy communities

Despite considerable literature exploring Brazil’s participatory management, less academic attention focuses on Brazil’s public policy councils ( conselhos gestores de políticas públicas), which are permanent political-institutional structures on a range of policy issues mediating between society and the state. This article analyses urban policy councils in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul State, and Niterói, Rio de Janeiro State, considering whether this participatory planning tool advances democratic inclusion. We approach participatory planning through the lens of policy communities. Through these cases, we demonstrate that these two councils do not, in fact, enable all those affected and interested to influence and define policies. Yet even if the views of the most disenfranchised do not ultimately prevail, these urban policy councils contribute to publicizing urban policy issues and democratizing the range of stakeholders that gain access to the policy community. We conclude by highlighting suggestions for improving public policy councils as mechanisms for participatory planning.

Rights, justice and climate resilience: lessons from fieldwork in urban Southeast Asia

Recent transformative resilience research calls for urban climate interventions that better meet the needs of low-income and other marginalized groups. Such initiatives, it is suggested, must move beyond technocratic and superficial solutions to address the systems and structures that create climate vulnerability. While these are important theoretical developments, there is still much to be learned about how to support transformative resilience on the ground. This paper situates transformative resilience theory in practice with lessons from a five-year research partnership in Southeast Asian cities. We argue that for resilience research to advance rights and justice, knowledge production and mobilization efforts must be conceptualized as active parts of the transformation process. Bringing together conceptual and methodological insights from resilience, political ecology and governance learning research, we offer three pathways for transformative resilience and present examples of how they can be operationalized in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Contributions of participatory budgeting to climate change adaptation and mitigation: current local practices across the world and lessons from the field

This paper explores the extent to which participatory budgeting (PB) contributes to climate change adaptation and mitigation, based on an analysis of initiatives from 15 cities and regions in the global South and North. PB contributions are far from marginal, with significant investments decided by local people. The paper highlights some of the numerous innovations introduced to integrate PB into climate adaptation and mitigation efforts. Through a scrutiny of 4,400 PB projects, the research identified six categories of climate-related projects encompassing hardware as well as software approaches, such as awareness-raising activities, community-based early warning projects and research. The paper advocates for solidarity PBs for climate justice, and raises awareness of the huge (and as yet largely untapped) potential for this to help address the dramatic impacts that climate change has on millions of people’s lives. It also points to questions for future research.

Mapping participatory planning in Havana: patchwork legacies for a strengthened local governance

In 2019, Cuba approved a new political constitution that calls for deepening citizen participation to strengthen local governance. The emerging decentralization processes and the role of new actors in urban development open new possibilities for inclusive planning. While citizen participation is widely documented in the global South and under Western liberal democracy regimes, participatory urban planning in the context of Southern socialist cities such as Havana has been less scrutinized. This paper aims at mapping the framings, trajectories and legacies of such participatory planning initiatives. Based on mapping workshops and desktop research, we find that participatory initiatives within Havana are spatially dispersed, sporadic, lacking at the city level, and occurring in isolation at the neighbourhood level. We argue that establishing sustained participatory urban planning practices in Havana requires decision makers to scale outwards and upwards the lessons learned from existing initiatives to foster a city-wide participatory planning strategy.