Adriana Allen, Professor of Development Planning and Urban Sustainability, University College London, UK, spoke on Beyond urban risk traps? Seeking the nexus through the everyday, at the Nexus Network Urban Nexus workshop on 12 May 2016.
In the informal settlements on the edges of cities like Lima, a sizeable number of women and men struggle to access water, energy and food on an everyday basis.
Their struggles and trajectories through the city are shaped by the complex and often exclusionary architecture of endowments, entitlements and capabilities that defines the life of those living in ‘informality’.
Drawing on a series of action-research projects undertaken in Lima – the second largest metropolis in the world situated in a desert area – this presentation explores how ordinary citizens living in conditions of marginalisation carve individually and collectively material and political spaces to cope, challenge and at points transform the risk accumulation cycles or ‘urban risk traps’ in which they live.
Working with local communities in the historic centre (Barrios Altos) and periphery of the city (José Carlos Mariátegui), the Read more on the Clima Sin Riesgo project aims to enhance spatial knowledge, assess ongoing investments and efforts to mitigate risk and create innovative evidence-based tools that could facilitate the formulation of planning strategies and intervention mechanisms capable of disrupting the ‘urban risk traps’ that undermine the efforts and investments made by the urban poor as well as state agencies.
Download a pdf of Adriana’s slides here Adriana_presentation12May2016
The full programme of the event is available on the Urban Nexus workshop page.
Image credit, with many thanks to Nathan Oxley at the STEPS centre.
