Informal Cities Programme
Description
By 2050, approximately 70% of the global population will reside in urban areas, demanding the fulfilment of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within urban contexts. As formal cities expand in developing regions, informal settlements and economies concurrently grow, often bypassing typical legal and regulatory frameworks.
These informal sectors pervade the socio-economic structures of areas such as Brazil's favelas or South Africa's townships, representing over 60% of cities globally. Notably, the majority of employment in many emerging economies is classified as informal. Comprehending these informal cities and the millions inhabiting them is crucial to achieving the SDGs. However, the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of these cities poses significant challenges for extensive data collection and analysis.
Recently, novel methods have been devised for the efficient collection of diverse data, although their meaningful interpretation necessitates interdisciplinary collaboration and the active involvement of non-academic stakeholders.
The research will encompass a selection of cities from India, Africa, and Latin America, examining the available data types, their recency, comprehensiveness, and depth. The focus will be on informal systems, harmonising existing data sources such as administrative data, regional surveys, geospatial data, satellite imagery, and mobile data. The team will utilise expertise from anthropology, geography, mathematics, and epidemiology to discover innovative approaches to studying informal neighbourhoods, economies, healthcare, and transport.
The research will gather data relating to several SDGs - including health, gender equality, economic growth, infrastructure, and inequality - and align them to allow an in-depth investigation of the interconnections among various provisions in the informal city: housing, employment, transport, and healthcare. By bridging the 'data gap' on informal cities, the study will aim to identify both scalable and specific solutions to delivering SDGs in informal city systems.
Offers funding
No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.
Contact details
Old Indian Institute Building
34 Broad Street
Oxford
Oxfordshire
OX1 3BD
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University affiliation(s)
University of Oxford
Oxford
University of Oxford
Oxford
Last modified:
2024-06-07 16:43:21