About the project
Why crisis?
We are living in an era of global crisis. City residents are impacted by financial, climate, health and political disruption. Top-down responses such as curfews are often flawed, repressive or lacking sensitivity. This can particularly affect communities in cities with high levels of inequality and exclusion.
Focus
The research team includes experts from urban studies, communication studies, political science, and geography, with extensive experience using participatory, audiovisual methods in Latin American and African cities. Together we aim to:
- Explore how urban crises are represented by people in four South African and Colombian cities, and by media and other organisations outside these cities.
- Understand the relationship between how crises are represented, and how effective crisis response is, according to local people.
- Compare representations of and responses to crises across diverse cities in South Africa and Colombia: Cape Town, Johannesburg, Cali and Buenaventura.
Action
The most important people for this project are the community organisations we have worked with and the people they serve in these four cities. Findings from the project will be shared with those organisations in order to help them reflect on and improve their work.
The second audience for this project are local government officials and other community groups which respond to different kinds of crises. Results will be disseminated in order to raise awareness of local crisis response experiences, including successes and failures.
The third target group are international non-profit organizations such as the Overseas Development Institute, the Development Studies Association, and BOND. Our research will support them in understanding and engaging in constructive dialogue on improving crisis response practices globally.