BUILDING BACK STRONGER: URBAN RESILIENCE THROUGH POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION.

• Author: Wahba, Sameh

INTRODUCTION

Conflicts affect cities in diverse ways that render peacebuilding difficult. They often take a heavy toll on the most vulnerable people, especially those with lower human capital endowments, smaller networks and safety nets, and limited political representation. Conflicts also force people to relocate in search of security, safety, and livelihoods. More than 79.5 million people, ofwhom 40 percent were children, had been forced to relocate as of 2019--the highest number on record--and two out of three internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in urban or peri-urban areas. (1,i) Such a sudden and large inflow of people can change the dynamics of host cities, overstretching existing urban infrastructure and service delivery systems that may already be strained or fragile. This can result in increased security risks, discrimination, and xenophobia against the migrant or minority groups, driven by competition over scarce resources, politicized violence, governance failure, and deep-rooted ethnic or religious division. Conflicts shatter urban agglomerations by disrupting critical urban systems and services such as housing, sanitation, transportation, and health. They can also destroy buildings and monuments that hold intangible value to collective memory, unsettling people's identities and their connection to place. At the same time, conflict compounds the effects of other shocks. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, has exacerbated the challenges in conflict-affected and fragile settings, intensifying the deprivation of marginalized groups like refugees who often have inadequate access to basic services, information, and social and political spaces. (2) Pandemics, natural hazards, and other such shocks do not cease because a city is in the throes of conflict.

Regardless of the channel through which conflicts affect cities, rebuilding an urban area's physical, economic, social, and political dimensions after conflicts--especially protracted ones--is an onerous undertaking. It necessitates integrated approaches that focus on both people and place to address the underlying dynamics of vulnerability. Rebuilding that fails to address the root causes of conflict can magnify and reinforce existing tensions and undermine social inclusion and economic growth. Instead, rebuilding can and should serve as an opportunity to leverage cities' unique social, environmental, and spatial endowments to emphasize inclusion, diversity, and pluralism. Lasting resilience is founded on an inclusive and participatory approach, whereby the city and state--along with key stakeholders like communities and development partners--first understand who has been disproportionately affected by conflicts or is at risk of being left out of the reconstruction process, in what way, for what reasons, and then come to a determination of what can be done. (3) This requires building or strengthening institutions and nurturing human capital while investing in physical and economic capital. (ii) Investing in people encompasses efforts to ensure community participation, support livelihoods, and invest in basic social service delivery including health, education, and social protection, and integrate vulnerable populations and marginalized groups. Investing in place covers urban regeneration, infrastructure, service delivery, and public amenities, and a specific focus on mobility for the poor to enable access to jobs and services.

Successful post-conflict reconstruction, in its broadest sense, is about strengthening the ability to cope with future shocks, thus increasing the odds of lasting peace. (4) Many cities have had partial success with this. But those that have achieved sustained peace have done so by investing in both people and place. This article uses four examples to illustrate how cities have attempted to build spatial, social, and economic resilience to conflicts and other shocks with a focus on people and place: Medellin, Colombia; Mogadishu, Somalia; Timbuktu, Mali; and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. (iii) Each has lessons for other contexts, even if none offers an all-encompassing example of successful post-conflict reconstruction. Through the case studies, this paper seeks to demonstrate the complexities and challenges of a non-linear reconstruction process and how a people- and place-based, integrated approach can improve the resilience of cities affected by conflict.

FOUR CITIES, Two INGREDIENTS, ONE INTEGRATED APPROACH

Each of the four cities below has prioritized people- and place-based approaches in its reconstruction process. Each has also adopted these approaches in tandem, ensuring an integrated response to post-conflict challenges. This section describes the trajectory of the four cities.

Medellin, Colombia: A Regeneration Process Founded on Community Participation and Investments in Public Space, Amenities, and Mobility Infrastructure (5)

Medellin, Colombia was once characterized by protracted crime and violence that was fueled by the drug trade. It had the highest global homicide rate in the 1990s--one that was nearly 40 times greater than what is defined as "epidemic violence" by the UN. (iv) At the same time, the city was fraught with deep-seated socio-economic inequalities exacerbated by its geographical features and urban fabric; marginalized communities were isolated on the Andean hillsides with limited infrastructure to access other parts of the city. These conditions were aggravated by large numbers of rural migrants or IDPs who had arrived in the city after fleeing armed conflict elsewhere in the country. Migration and its spillover effects impacted the spatial and economic characteristics, as well as the growth, of Medellin. Informal settlements and neighborhoods that were already disconnected and ill-equipped with infrastructure and services became centers of violence and the influence of infamous drug cartels, exacerbating the city's existing challenges.

Against such pressing issues, Medellin introduced a series of innovative urban development policies to address its socio-economic challenges with the objectives of reintegrating the poor and marginalized groups into mainstream society and reconnecting their neighborhoods with the rest of the city. First, the city nurtured a new form of collaborative urban politics based on broader political participation and public debate, accompanied by a new national constitution in 1991 that mandated participatory democracy. The city's grassroots community organizations, religious and academic institutions, businesses, and artists regularly convened to discuss ideas to combat the culture of violence and inequality and engaged the most marginalized groups to build a shared vision for the city. Communal forums at the neighborhood level drew attention to the needs of residents and placed them at the center of the urban planning process. By bringing urban governance closer to communities, communities were empowered to influence the decision-making process around issues like municipal budgeting and cultivated a sense of ownership over their city Public debates and social interactions also served as means through which the people of Medellin came together to address problems. The city thus provided a vital platform to reconcile and overcome collective trauma and to plan for a better future.

Medellin also recognized the role of physical spaces and infrastructure in bridging territorial divisions and inequalities and in building trust. In the early 2000s, it embarked upon the notion of "social urbanism", establishing libraries, educational and cultural centers, and health clinics. It restored more than 40,000 square meters of parks and gardens in marginalized neighborhoods, providing the areas with safe, inclusive, and green public spaces and amenities. It built metro cable cars and outdoor escalators to facilitate mobility and transport residents across diverse socio-economic boundaries, connecting impoverished neighborhoods in Medellin's mountainous periphery to the rest of the city. In doing so, the city helped break down physical and psychological barriers to cohesion. Furthermore, it created digitized maps for Comuna 13, which was once a notorious neighborhood controlled by drug cartels. (6) These maps marked the location of violent and illegal activities and introduced new urban features to enhance safety, such as additional street lighting, pedestrian bridges, and community centers.

The transformative public spaces and infrastructure played more than just the obvious physical roles; they were powerful symbols that embraced the once excluded and most deprived groups as an integral part of the city and served as catalysts for a...