Urban Governance, Citizenship and Social Vulnerability

Dear Colleagues,

In light of the extraordinarily dynamic transformation of urban settlements and lifeworlds, urban dwellers are confronted with a multitude of stressors, challenges, and contradicting phenomena which undermine efforts to achieve the SDGs and the goals of the New Urban Agenda. Uncertainties related to climate and environmental change, extreme hazardous events, population growth, infrastructure deficits, and numerous other pressures and risks are significantly accumulating, with cascading negative impacts on everyday urban routines, especially for the poor and marginalized. The combined effects of escalating demand for land, services, and housing, and a dwindling availability of spaces with sufficient access to safe food, water, mobility, and income resources produce fragmented urban quarters and infrastructures marked by high levels of criticality, insecurity, and vulnerability.

While cities are transforming incredibly quickly and in a disorderly fashion, attempts to capture the city by means of urban governance are often spatially and socially selective, ineffective, or non-existent due to a lack of institutional capacities and resources. This is especially true in urban environments of the so-called “Global South”, or in risk- and disaster-prone areas.

As large portions of the urban population often have no say when it comes to reconfiguring “their” city, issues of governance and social inclusion are becoming increasingly important. The need to understand urban residents as citizens who are entitled to shape their living environments and lifeworlds according to their own needs and preferences is gradually being recognized in academia and amongst urban professionals as a key to mitigate vulnerability and foster sustainable livelihoods. In recent years, “just city” and “right-to-the-city” debates have been somewhat revived. However, notions of citizenship, resident involvement, and identity and belonging vary greatly in different spatial and political contexts. Both in research and practice, there is still a need to systematically link governance to social vulnerability patterns and citizenship framings. We therefore invite inter- and trans-disciplinary contributions focusing on inter-linkages between urban governance and social vulnerability from rights-based or citizen-oriented perspectives. Both theoretical/conceptual papers and those providing empirical evidence from case studies (e.g., best or bad practice examples) are welcome.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Fred Krüger
Guest Editor

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• urban livelihoods
• resilience
• resourcefulness
• equity
• just city
• participation
• social inclusion
• risk
• disasters
• urban management and planning