Beyond urban risk traps?

Seeking the nexus through

the everyday

Adriana Allen (a.allen@ucl.ac.uk)

The Bartlett Development Planning

Unit (DPU), University College

London

Nexuses of the Urban:

Interactions between water, energy

and food provision for sustainable

cities

SPRU, Brighton, 12-13 May 2016

Reframing the nexus from a risk perspective

• The urban nexus is constructed materially and immaterially through the individual and collective actions of a sizeable number of women and men, who struggle to access water, energy and food on an everyday basis.

• Yet this does not mean that their capacity to do so is just defined by their agency but rather that their agency and room for manoeuvre to cope with or transform highly unjust conditions is in fact regulated by the complex architecture of endowments, entitlements and capabilities that defines the life of those living in ‘informality’.

• When such architecture does not support processes of just urbanisation, the nexuses break down, leaving a large number of people trapped in risk accumulation cycles or ‘urban risk traps’.

BARRIO MIO

Stairways to heaven: Seeking the urban nexus in the periphery of Lima

1970-80s:

Urbanismo popular autogestionario

The ‘old settler’,

the ‘newcomer’,

the ‘tourist’

and the ‘corrupt’

The urbanisation of hope

Everyday planning through coping mechanisms

Everyday risk and small-scale disasters

Vulnerability, tenure and (in)capacity to act

Everyday planning under neglectful tolerance

Settlement Timelines

Making the invisible visible

Self-enumeration through mapping

Entitlements in JCMSpace matters

Online story maps

Y el consiguiente riiesgo de enfermedades respiratorias

From research beneficiaries to knowledge producers

The ‘risk wheel’: The hidden cogs of the nexus

Cooperation

Competition

Cooperation

Competition

Risk Co-

management

pacts

Risk mapping &

enumeration

‘Passive’

land use

Collective

investments

& ‘faenas’

Construction of

retention walls

Risk

internalisation

e.g.: through

reduced mobility

& livelihoods

Planes de

Desarrollo

Integrado

(PUI)Participatory

Budgeting

Barrio Mio

Land titling

Relocation &

compensation

Eviction

Whose practices?

What practices?

Under what relations

and conditions?

With what

consequences?

Where? For

whom?

Institutional

practices

Everyday

practices

Sou

rce:

Alle

n, A

(2

01

4)

The

risk

wh

eel’.

ES3

Tea

chin

g R

eso

urc

es, U

CL

Bar

tlet

t D

evel

op

men

t P

lan

nin

g U

nit

, Lo

nd

on

.

Collaborative practices

Individualising practices

Disrupting homogeneising framings

Everyday

practicesInstitutional

practices

Discursive practices

Material practices

Tangible

routinised

interventions

materialised in

concrete places

Interpretations of ‘reality’

Contextualised

ways of

knowing and

talking about

‘reality’ Identity

Social

relations

Interpretations of ‘change’

Abstract and

normative ways

of knowing and

talking about

‘reality’

Tangible

routinised

interventions at

various scales

Formal planning Everyday planning

Source: Allen, A (2014) ESD MSc Teaching Resources. DPU, London

Forename Surname – PRESENTATION TITLE – Monday 30 January 2012

cLIMAsin Riesgowww.climasinriesgo.net