Typology of actions to improve cities’ resilience

The second section looks at actions cities can take to increase their resilience in the face of shocks and stresses. It seeks to identify best practices and innovative strategies in resilience, with a focus on four areas: cities that are greener and more liveable, partnerships, new approaches to urban planning, and accustoming residents to risk. 1. Greener and more liveable cities In an attempt to increase their resilience, cities are increasingly committing to paying more attention to envir..

Access to essential services: key figures and progress on the African continent

Urban population (in thousands) on the African continent, 1950 to 2050 Source: United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, the 2018 Revision In recent years, many areas of Africa have seen progress in closing the gap in terms of access to essential services in water, sanitation, energy and waste management. But provision remains sadly insufficient to provide for most of people’s needs against a background of unparalleled population growth. The Sustainable Development Goals set out ambitiou..

New agricultural purposes in the city

Arising where individual practices meet private initiatives and reflections on urban policy, the revival in urban agriculture serves multiple causes, from strengthening links between the city and nature to creating new urban development models, via reinventing food production systems. Reintegrating nature into the city In response to urban dwellers’ aspirations, urban agriculture is calling upon ancient practices to reintroduce natural and productive spaces into the city, to bring the rural ..

Conditions needed for scaling up successfully

There are a number of pitfalls to avoid when talking about innovation. First is not embracing an overly romanticized vision of bottom-up innovations. Then there is the risk of blithely embracing technophilia. Many initiatives remain small scale and might never have the reach needed to overcome the challenges of accessing essential services across Africa. There are a number of seemingly vital success conditions to meet if innovative solutions for accessing services are to see lasting improveme..

Challenges and risks specific to urban areas

The first section in this issue seeks to analyze the key risks and challenges, primarily environmental, facing urban areas and examine the consequences these challenges may have on their development. The notion of the resilient city has developed essentially since the end of the Second World War. Risk has become a central component of modern societies, with the advent of the risk society as imagined by Ulrich Beck in the 1980s. While the post-war period and subsequent Cold War saw the emerge..

Heading towards 2030: outlook and challenges for essential services in Africa

The demographic revolution sweeping modern Africa is primarily urban. Everybody knows that population numbers are rising and with Africa already home to close to 15% of the world’s population, compared to 7% in 1960, it also has the fastest rate of population growth of any region of the world. Africa’s population is also the world’s youngest: 60% of Africans are aged under 25, compared to 44% in emerging economies, and 80% of its people earn under $5 a day. This combination of phenomena – a ..

Urban resilience: introducing this issue and summarizing the discussions

Resilience is an issue of increasing importance to city managers and policymakers. The idea first emerged in the scientific world and was then taken up by psychologists and ecologists to describe the ability to resist unforeseen events and return to a pre-event state. Since the turn of the millennium, many major cities are increasingly adopting resilience strategies to plan for and manage a range of risks, not only environmental but also economic, social, food security, and so on. Cities are at the center of the idea of resilience insofar as they are simultaneously part of the problem, as the major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but also potential victims of natural disasters – coastal cities are, for example, vulnerable to hurricanes and rising sea levels. Cities are also the source of future solutions, via, for instance, networks of resilient cities and their capacity to manage problems on a “human scale.” There is a measure of disagreement surrounding the term resilience, with some encouraged by its all-embracing nature and others decrying it as simply a catch-all concept. Resilience – assuming that certain strategic, holistic, durability and collaborative conditions for achieving legitimacy have been met – can, however, provide an array of new tools to help foster the emergence of the sustainable and enduring city of tomorrow

High-potential innovations for a fast-changing continent

Africa, particularly the sub-Saharan regions, has long been handicapped by the prevalence of simplistic images, rooted either in afro-pessimism or over-valuing the leapfrog effect to transform its development gap into new comparative advantages. Countless reports have highlighted this new narrative, depicting an Africa that is digital and innovative, mobile money being an iconic example of this powerful new movement. However, there is less focus on the vision of development, urban in particu..

From ecological transition to ecological transformation: consensus and fault lines

At a time when there is growing consensus in international policy-making about the urge to act on climate change, debate continues to rage over the approach and mechanisms to adopt for implementing the ecological transition. The events of 2022, including the rising number of environmental disasters during the summer, have served as a wake-up call, heightening the sense of urgency. But ecological transition is a complex matter, raising issues that involve more than just environmental and climate challenges. It is also vital to look at how such a transition interacts with the fight against inequalities, the realities of crises and geopolitical relationships, and the specific growth — or degrowth — model that we collectively wish to put in place

Guide de soutien à la co-construction d’un balado

Ressources éducatives libresOpen educational resourcesCette ressource éducative libre (REL) a été produite dans le cadre de la démarche d’innovation pédagogique intitulée « Balado en soutien aux apprentissages socio-affectifs : limiter l’influence des biais sur la relation d’aide » qui a pour objectif de soutenir des apprentissages du domaine socioaffectif chez des personnes étudiantes engagées dans une formation en santé ou en relation d’aide. Cette REL consiste en un guide pour les personnes qui voudraient s’engager dans une démarche de co-construction pour concevoir un balado. Cette REL propose des canevas de travail pour guider et structurer la co-construction d’un balado. Cette REL propose des exemples à des fins d’illustration