Earlier this month, our CEO Professor Diana Mitlin participated at the 9th Urbanization and Development Conference, organised by the World Bank and the International Growth Centre in Cape Town.

As a former economist, Diana has long been keen to bring economists into conversation with other development practitioners and researchers.

Reflecting on the varied discussions at the conference, Diana said:

“In many African cities, we are witnessing remarkable urban innovation. This is often driven by local governments working alongside organised communities, businesses and researchers. It is crucial that we recognise and nurture this organic growth.

There is immense value in integrating economics into urban studies; this interdisciplinary approach offers profound insights into the dynamics of urban development.

Conversely, it is equally important for economists to engage directly with urban realities, moving beyond abstract data to understand the complex, interwoven relationships that define our cities.” 

You can watch Diana’s contributions to the conference below, where she presented “Understanding the contribution of housing to economic development”, pushing back again the idea of “consumption cities” and “sterile agglomeration”. Instead, she highlighted the economic potential of working with small-scale businesses located within informal settlements to generate growth from below.

Diana also acted as a discussant in a policy-focused session on solutions for prosperous African cities, emphasising the importance of understanding the realities of people within cities and the dominance of informal settlements, and also the role of urban reform coalitions.

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Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

By Chris Jordan, ACRC’s communications manager

The 12th World Urban Forum took place in Cairo last week – only the second time it has been held in Africa since its inception in Nairobi in 2002. A record 24,000 people attended from 182 countries – and it often felt like it (particularly while queueing for lunch)!

WUF (as it is universally known) came at the perfect time for us at ACRC. We are currently finalising the publication of all our foundation phase research on cities and domains, at the same time as scoping the action research projects that address key problems we highlighted in a number of locations.

Unlike some of our colleagues at SDI, who have attended every single WUF, it was my first time. So here are some of my reflections as a WUF newbie.

Urbanists are an extremely diverse bunch

Throughout the week, we ran an ACRC booth in the Urban Expo. The Expo took up two enormous conference “hangars”, featuring country booths, NGOs, universities, projects, campaigns, companies and more.

 We talked to hundreds of people – and in stark contrast to the more development-focused crowd at other events, the diversity of the attendees really struck me. There were far more planners, architects, designers and engineers than I had anticipated. This gave a richness to the conversations and reminded me that the overall approach of ACRC – with its focus on the catalysing politics of urban change for the most marginalised communities – provides a really distinctive contribution.

We’re in the process of developing an online course, based on our foundation phase research findings and I’ve returned home with a positive bounce for its potential. ACRC really is adding something new to urban debates and thinking.

Community voices can’t be taken for granted

We hosted an official “voices from the city” side event with SDI and IUSD Cairo on “learning from community voices, universities and knowledge processes”. The speakers emphasised the importance of hearing directly from people living in cities, rather than relying solely on poor quality national data, particularly across African countries.

Sheila also highlighted the vital role of the Urban Informality Forum in Harare. Hosted by the University of Zimbabwe, it provides a platform for dialogue and debate between city officials, companies and community groups. The forum has helped all parties to move beyond previous deadlocks on issues of informality, and allows current issues (like the recent fire at Mbare market) to be meaningfully addressed from a range of perspectives.

The scope and scale of the task means that reform coalitions are essential

As the final Cairo Call to Action emphasises,

“The magnitude and interconnected nature of urban development challenges and opportunities requires stronger collaboration for progress. Local action is more impactful when driven by coalitions that bring together communities, local and national governments, the private sector and civil society. Empowering local actors through these partnerships and coalitions is a powerful tool for addressing community-specific challenges while aligning with broader national and global goals.”

Given ACRC’s work to better understand and catalyse urban reform coalitions, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we heartily agree. However, there’s also a huge challenge to put this into practice, particularly at the scale required to create substantive change for people across urban areas in Africa – and further afield.

Many of these issues were discussed in a Habitat Village discussion session, facilitated by ACRC’s Diana Mitlin and Shuaib Lwasa on the penultimate day. The group highlighted the important role of regular coalition spaces (like the Urban Informality Forum in Harare) to help hold authorities accountable, in addition to generating mutual understanding. We debated the varied forms of coalitions – from informal groupings of individual reformers, to formal organisational structures – as well as highlighting the potentially negative effects of coalition structures being instrumentalised by funders.

In launching the new Hub for Housing Justice at WUF, our colleagues in IIED highlighted a vital issue that has been previously overlooked on the international urban agenda. As SDI’s Beth Chitekwe-Biti remarked at the launch, genuinely affordable housing is a universal issue – for both North and South. Manchester’s Social Housing Commission, which brings together community activists, researchers and members of the city council, may provide a template for others to follow.

At the end of WUF, I managed to fit in a quick visit to the Giza pyramids, close to the centre of Cairo. Standing beneath the vast bulk and awesome height of the pyramids, constructed over 4,500 years ago, I felt that they lay down a silent challenge for us.

If an ancient civilisation could create such an enduring physical legacy, then it is surely not beyond our collective capabilities to create a radically better urban environment for all city dwellers – across Africa and beyond.

Photo credits: Chris Jordan and Hannah van Rooyen

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

For the first time in over 20 years, the World Urban Forum is being hosted on the African continent.

The African Cities Research Consortium will be there – so if you’re attending, please come and say hello! Look out for the ACRC exhibition booth where you can chat to us and find out more about our research and future plans.

To highlight the successful urban reform efforts we’ve been showcasing via our database, we’ll be asking people to tell us about their favourite example of inclusive urban reform. If you’ve got a good story, please come to the ACRC booth and let us know about it!

Learning from community voices

On Wednesday 6 November at 13:00–14:30, we are co-convening a session in Room F: ‘Learning from community voices, universities and knowledge processes: Experiences across Africa’.

Alongside SDI and IUSD, we will be discussing the value of community knowledge in driving urban reform, practical ways it can be incorporated into research and the broader role of universities in validating community knowledge.

Panellists include:

• Beth Chitekwe-Biti, Managing Director of Slum Dwellers International, and ACRC’s Community Knowledge Research Director
• Tapiwa Maruza, Informal Settlement Upgrading Officer at Namibia Housing Action Group
• Baher Shaarawy, Technical Advisor to the Prime Minister and Minister of Housing and Lecturer at HBRC, Egypt
• Sheila Muganyi, Community Leader of Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation

Developing city reform coalitions, allyships and better partnerships

On Thursday 7 November at 15:30–16:30, we will be hosting an informal discussion as part of the Habitat Village at Booth 7323 in Hall 4.

We’ll debate the role of reform coalitions in driving sustainable urban transformation, exploring the potential and pitfalls of bringing together communities, civil society organisations, government officials, politicians and researchers to co-produce reform. We hope to share experiences, insights and practical solutions for working together as part of an effective urban reform coalition.

Partner events

We’re also looking forward to attending the events being run by other ACRC partners, including:

• The launch of the Hub for Housing Justice, with IIED’s Alex Frediani (who co-led our work on housing) – Thursday 7 November at 13:00
• The raft of events through the week that ICLEI Africa is hosting

Header photo credit: WUF12 logo overlaying image of Dar es Salaam by Moiz Husein / iStock.

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.