Habitat III – 20 October events
Non-official Habitat III events with Urban Transformations involvement (participant or organizer)
Disrupting urban risk traps: Towards transformative resilience
9.30-12.30 Unofficial bi-regional networking event
Campus of Sustainable Cities, Auditorium
Tackling the accumulation of everyday risks and small episodic disasters into risk traps is a key challenge to meet the objectives of the New Urban Agenda. This networking event aims to bring together a community of practice across Latin America and Africa to foster productive exchanges and to stimulate critical and inspiring reflections on how different types of interventions can effectively contribute to disrupt urban risk traps, while opening new paths towards transformative urban resilience.
The session is open to grassroots organisations, NGOs, researchers, policy-makers, local and national governments and regional and international agencies striving to seek strategic, grounded and incremental ways to disrupt urban risk accumulation cycles.
Organization
The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London, cLIMA sin Riesgo and Urban Africa Risk Knowledge
Implementing gender transformation in the New Urban Agenda
11.00-12.00 Next City World Stage Event
World Stage Pavilion, Habitat III Centre
1. How do we understand gender transformation? This is an inherently political act closely associated with structural change in gender power relations that emphasises collective action – as distinct from ‘empowerment’ that addresses individual women’s agency and bargaining power. The gender transformation framework links gender asset accumulation pathways to empowerment and transformation.
2. What are examples of transformative gendered interventions in cities? Panelists, linked to global urban women’s networks, share examples of gender transformation interventions, long-term complex negotiated power struggles confronting gender inequalities and disparities.
- In Recife, Brazil, Espaço Feminista, with Huairou Commission, struggled for women’s land titles in the Ponte do Maduro Master Plan; this empowered individual women, but also structural transformation in land regularization processes.
- In Indian cities, SEWA, supported by WIEGO, has brought voice and visibility to informal women workers through lengthy, successful mediation processes with city municipalities to recognize the legal rights of informal traders.
In Zimbabwe, the Homeless People’s Federation, a member of SDI, organizes savings groups to negotiate with local government authorities to secure land, upgrade housing, and collectively upgrade. - International migration affects women’s capability to claim their rights in cities; FLACSO, a Quitobased research centre highlights the transformative experiences of Ecuadorian women.
- London-based Latin American Women’s Rights Service focuses on diaspora women’s rights to the city across global contexts.
3. Does the NUA include gender transformation interventions? The NUA has a long way to go. Three of the 32 paragraphs referring to women include potential transformative interventions; on land tenure, safe cities and informal economy. But even these lack an indication of the necessary means for implementation in practice.