Humanitarian Aid on the Move - Cities and Crises - newsletter number 8

While cities grew with the acceleration of the rural exodus and urbanisation, the con`licts of the Cold War directed humanitarian action towards rural environments.

Cities, which had been the scene of violence up tillWWII with the bombing of Dresden, the siege of Stalingrad and the ruins of Hiroshima, began to take centre stage again at the beginning of the 90s with wars such as those in Sarajevo, Mogadishu and Grozny. Humanitarian practices were not adapted to these new operational contexts. Groupe URD began its research project “Wars in cities and cities in wars” in 2001 which aimed to shed light on the challenges of humanitarian action in cities and urban reconstruction. Thiswas followed bymajor projects on Afghan cities, post-tsunami reconstruction and `inally on integrating speci`ic urban characteristics into the response to the Haiti earthquake. For ten years now, it has been one of our priorities to promote an urban perspective in a world where crises in cities and cities in crisis aremore andmore frequent and destructive. The Cities and Crises conference in April 2011, organized in partnership with the Mairie de Paris and with the support of the Rhône-Alpes Region, was an opportunity for a wide variety of representatives fromhumanitarian and development organisations, NGOs, UN agencies, Red Cross organizations, Regional Cooperation bodies and universities to discuss their work, their practices and their dif- `iculties. This special issue of Humanitarian Aid on the Move, written by some of those who spoke at the conference, aims to give an idea of the richness of the exchanges which took place. Far from closing the subject, these articles raise fundamental questions for the sector which call for re`lection, exploration and innovation.

Contents: Cities and crises What is French decentralised cooperation doing in terms of territorial crisis management? The challenges of reconstruction from the point of view of local authorities Managing crises in urban areas: food and nutritional security and urban-rural links Kabul - Port au Prince, re`lections on post crisis aid operations in urban environments Cities and global risks Towards the sustainable development of urban areas affected by disasters Humanitarian programmes which need to be adapted to urban vulnerabilities in Port-au-Prince, Freetown, Charikar or Ulan Bator Post-earthquake Haiti: Supporting the post-earthquake urban reconstruction process Humanitarian action in cities : new challenges, new roles ? Post-disaster re-housing in cities: should we support social dynamics or reinforce the status quo? Bibliography Events