Inserting rights and justice into urban resilience: a focus on everyday risk

TLDR

Resilience building has become a key policy agenda for urban risk management, yet its relevance for African cities remains under‑examined because most frameworks originate from the global North. The study proposes that centering the rights of urban citizens, rather than physical infrastructure, can address the root causes of everyday unacceptable risks faced by residents. The authors outline four entry points: shifting from narrow financial risk analyses to negotiated resilience, incorporating local knowledge and norms, and embedding urban resilience within global systems to enable African contributions.

Abstract

Resilience building has become a growing policy agenda, particularly for urban risk management. While much of the resilience agenda has been shaped by policies and discourses from the global North, its applicability for cities of the global South, particularly African cities, has not been sufficiently assessed. Focusing on rights of urban citizens as the object to be made resilient, rather than physical and ecological infrastructures, may help to address many of the root causes that characterize the unacceptable risks that urban residents face on a daily basis. Linked to this idea, we discuss four entry points for grounding a rights and justice orientation for urban resilience. First, notions of resilience must move away from narrow, financially oriented risk analyses. Second, opportunities must be created for “negotiated resilience”, to allow for attention to processes that support these goals, as well as for the integration of diverse interests. Third, achieving resilience in ways that do justice to the local realities of diverse urban contexts necessitates taking into account endogenous, locally situated processes, knowledges and norms. And finally, urban resilience needs to be placed within the context of global systems, providing an opportunity for African contributions to help reimagine the role that cities might play in these global financial, political and science processes.