Stimulating a dialogue on disaster risk management between medium-sized cities of Latin America

This is an event organized by the EJUR cluster

Academic and policy discourses often emphasize the rapid growth of medium-sized cities and their increasing relevance for hosting most of the world’s urban population in the future. However, there seems to be a salient contrast between the archetypical characterisation of medium-sized cities and the profile of several Latin American cities. The regional specificity is underpinned by notions such as the primacy index, and a tradition of decentralisation exercises that intended to recognise the autonomy of cities at an early stage. In this EJUR cluster presentation, we present the first outline of a co-authored book chapter, which challenges oversimplifying characterisations of medium-sized cities based on the experiences of Santa Fe (Argentina) and Manizales (Colombia) in the field of disaster risk management (DRM). We argue that DRM offers a proliferous entry point for reframing the possibilities of medium-sized cities in relation to emergent and complex urban environmental issues. Through a dialogue between the widely recognised DRM approaches in Santa Fe and Manizales, we propose a more nuanced understanding of medium-sized cites building upon the historical trajectories and related functional roles of this kind of urban areas.

Speakers: Eva Filippi, Julia Wesely, Cassidy Johnson