Taking initiative and collaboration also matter at smaller scales. Neighbourhoods are opportunities for immediate action and adopting an integrated approach at this scale can help overcome barriers and ensure greater environmental sustainability. They can act as innovation labs, pursuing activities on a smaller scale that serve as proof of concept for replication at the city level. Neighbourhoods are big enough to aggregate interrelated social, environmental and economic components and provide the basis for a coherent urban model, but also small enough to reduce some of the complexities of systems integration and to allow results to be seen in a shorter time frame.
The need for more and better data Another key barrier to sustainable and just urban development is the lack of adequate data and data systems for planning. Many cities have little or no data that can provide relevant information on basic services for urban residents living in poverty in informal settlements. In some cases, despite 30 to 60 per cent of the urban population living in such conditions, basic information like street names and addresses is unavailable or missing (Satterthwaite 2020a). This makes it hard to bridge gaps in basic services and reduce the inherent vulnerabilities of those affected. Part of the issue lies in the lack of disaggregated data: despite most countries having census authorities, this data primarily serves the national government. Disaggregated data that can be used by urban local bodies for planning and to meet international targets and goals like the SDGs and NDCs is often absent. The challenges of maintaining data are exacerbated by the lack of institutional capacity, funding and accountability. There are several examples of city governments that have responded to poor official data by developing their own common database, collecting and compiling all the relevant data housed in different departments (Satterthwaite 2020b). However, such an approach runs up against the additional challenge of dealing with the compartmentalization of government agencies and departments working in silos. Moreover, this situation is further complicated by the lack of knowledge and understanding of the coping mechanisms of people living in poverty and the ways in which everyday resilience is built or eroded by planned interventions.
Despite the challenges presented by all these lock-ins, there are examples of how cities are trying to overcome them by experimenting with key enablers (see section 2.4) and further ways to overcome them through the pathways explored in chapter 5.
2.4 Catalyzing environmentally sustainable and just transformations
The previous sections have shown how ‘lock-in’ forces limit people’s access to the basic services that are so often taken for granted by more developed communities. They also reveal the embedded and interconnected systems of injustice that are produced by, and help to create, unsustainable trajectories for so many of the world’s cities and their inhabitants.
‘Shifting’ such path-dependencies, or disrupting ‘business as usual’, requires not only reducing environmental impacts and restoring ecosystems. It also requires whole-of-society engagement with issues of social equity and justice and challenging current systems of distribution, recognition, and participation. It means addressing difficult trade- offs, working across silos and, most difficult still, shifting embedded power structures. This is no small task, which goes some way towards explaining the tendency towards inertia within current city structures. Certainly, the short- termism inherent in most current political systems tends to favour existing power structures and immediate political wins (e.g. jobs in carbon intensive industries), at the expense of uncertain long-term transformation processes.
However, there are examples of cities that are already taking steps toward environmentally sustainable and just transformations (C40 Cities and Arup 2015). These responses are often the result of collaborative processes at multiple scales. Below are three examples of governance strategies that have helped catalyze transformative change. These practices and ‘ways of doing things differently’ both enable and reflect shifts in the political economies of cities and have helped to address some of the capacity constraints and governance barriers that keep cities locked in to unsustainable trajectories.
2.4.1 Inclusive, Publicly Engaged Decision-Making
A key root cause of the ‘lock-in’ to environmentally unsustainable and unjust urban approaches is the exclusion of some (at times a majority) local voices and urban populations from policy and planning processes. Recognizing this and opening up the decision-making process to give voice to those who historically have not been able to inform urban policies and planning strategies, has helped cities address both inequity and environmental unsustainability. The goal here has been ensuring that those most affected by unsustainable ‘business as usual’ approaches are heard, that their needs are taken into consideration, but also, and crucially, that their knowledge of urban dynamics, and their capacity to partner in solution- finding and city-making, are taken seriously.
A good example of this is in Mandlakazi in Mozambique (see chapter 1), where the city has promoted participatory governance with particular attention to gender and youth perspectives, creating several participation platforms to this end, including the Municipal Children’s Forum, Municipal Youth Forum, Municipal Women’s Forum, and the Municipal Citizen Forum. The city’s experience in engaging with communities through participatory approaches and gender empowerment has been critical to increasing resilience. In particular, community engagement in the planning process has helped enhance systematic linkages between disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA).
Inclusive and participatory strategies and practices such as the Mandlakazi experience highlight the benefit of bringing a broad range of voices to participate in decision-making. Such inclusive and publicly engaged processes, where they exist with intent, tend to prioritize local concerns and
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