Project Activities

With partners at MIT (IDG) and the University of Utrecht (CTR) and coordinated out of the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) of the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the project is informed by political economy, geographic, new institutional economic and sociology perspectives and draws on a comparative case study methodology. Specifically, the project offers a unique assessment of the political economy of urban violence and service-delivery from the meso- to the micro-levels.
Output from this project will include:
  1. A review of the literature on urbanisation, chronic violence and institutional resilience (as a social form and as persistence);
  2. The critical assessment of core formal (state) and informal (non-state) institutions responsible for service delivery in selected cities (centres and peripheries) recovering from chronic armed violence;
  3. The development of metrics of service resilience and longitudinal review outputs and outcomes of key service delivery functions in relevant sectors (e.g. water delivery, sewage, electrification, communications, welfare services, public and population health provision, etc);
  4. Identification of patterns and manifestations of political, economic and social resilience and the way these were sustained across time and space; and
  5. Exploration of prospective entry-points for external donors and policy makers.
The first stage of the URCV project focuses on a series of preliminary case studies, or probes, in order to identify cities, institutions, and actors to be empirically studied in later stages of the project. Anticipated plausibility probes are envisioned for the following list of case studies: Belfast (Ireland), Mostar (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Beirut (Lebanon), Medellin (Columbia), Mexico City (Mexico), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Dili (Timor Leste), Jakarta (Indonesia), Freetown (Sierra Leone), and Chisinau (Moldova). Additional case studies may be added or removed as the project progresses.
Case study probes will explore urban systems with particular regard for how they experience and react to different forms of chronic violence. Each case study consists of a defined city-space/metropolitan area and a collection of formal and informal institutions - including transnational and international institutions where relevant - at the heart of security questions. Primarily, the case studies will examine how these institutions have displayed resilient characteristics in the face of urban insecurity - how they have adapted (or not adapted) to provide security consistent with commonly perceived threats.
Field based research is planned or ongoing in Beirut (Lebanon), Dili (Timor-Leste), Kigali (Rwanda), Jos (Nigeria), Medellin (Colombia), Mexico city (Mexico), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil),and elsewhere. Additional case studies will be added as the project progresses.
The second phase of research will consist primarily of desk-based research (with some preliminary field work) and a series of workshops attended by all the principles. Each case study will: undertake an exhaustive scan of the spatial, temporal and social dynamics of chronic violence for a given metropolitan/urban area; identify the shape and character of formal and informal institutions engaged, impacted, and responsive to insecurity; analyze the manner (and outcomes) in which such institutions adapt/cope and respond to stress; and examine the trade-offs and violence trajectories associated with these institutional adaptations. Research on these cities will be undertaken and coordinated by experts from partner universities in the URCV network.
At latter stages, the project hopes to explore methods of experimental design and testing to identify theme synergies and divergent patterns of urban resilience, and to create an Urban Resilience Observatory to recognize, study and report on instances of URCV. The Observatory would also offer ongoing policy intervention recommendations, and regular scholarly studies exploring the dynamics of URCV.
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