New Urban Planning and Design for Conflict-free Urbanization

Urban planning and design have been recognized as important tools to mitigate conflicts and reduce violence in the cities. These intervention-tools have been propounded and used in many highhomicide contexts of Latin American countries. But, the lives of the urban poor are wrecked by everyday crime, conflicts and violence or fear of these. It is argued that provisioning of housing, basic services and public spaces would have salubrious impacts on local built environment and by that contribute towards mitigating such everyday conflicts and violence or their fear. This strategy of reducing conflict and violence would work even in the larger political economy of lack of employment among youth and their engagement in criminal activities, social fissures in cities and often absence or ineffective law enforcement machinery.This side event will bring together experiences of everyday crime and conflicts in the lives of the lowincome communities and efforts at mitigating them, both through urban planning and design from four different projects, two in India (in Ahmedabad and Mumbai), one in South Africa (Cape Town) and one in three countries of Latin America (Santiago, Bogota, and Lima). These projects have been completed under the Safe and Inclusive Cities (SAIC) Program, funded by the IDRC and DFID. The SAIC is a global research program that documents the links between urban violence, poverty, and inequalities.Darshini Mahadeviawould present every day conflicts in the life of the residents of peri-urban settlements in Ahmedabad; Richard Matzopoulos on pros and cons of taking slum upgrading as an intervention to reduce violence / crime in Cape Town; Hugo Fruhling on spatial segregation and limited state presence in provisioning of public services acting as drivers of conflicts and violence in three Latin American cites; and Amita Bhide on linking urban planning and conflicts in Mumbai.