Clik here to view.
Highlights from WUF7 Day 1
Monday April 7th was my first day at the 7th UN-Habitat World Urban Forum in Medellin. This is quite a special edition of WUF, as it is building up to the Third United Nations Conference on Housing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
DPU60 Day 2 – Informality, contestation, pragmatism and the urban imperative.
The DPU welcomed Joan Clos, the Director of UN Habitat, and Micahel Arthur, UCL Provost to a session that also featured DPU Visiting Professor David Satterthwaite. The session was chaired by Julio D....
View ArticleClik here to view.
A photographic exploration of urban issues: The DPU Photography Project...
Like many students in the Development Planning Unit, I realized that this year’s field trip would be a great opportunity to take pictures. However, I felt I wanted to do more than just going on a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mexico: Where does hope reside? (Part I)
They want a different future, Yucatán. Image: Étienne von Bertrab Mexico is going through turbulent times and its future looks, if not pitch black, then highly uncertain and complex. This is a personal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mexico: Where does hope reside? (Part II)
Just one week on To understand the depth of the socio-political crisis in Mexico it might be illustrative to go through events that occurred since Part I was posted a week ago: a mayor in the State of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mexico: Where does hope reside? (Part III)
La tierra no se vende, se ama y se defiende. La Parota, Guerrero. Image: Javier Verdin (Agua, Ríos y Pueblos) This post focuses upon the disconnection between the urban population in Mexico (a large...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Meaning of Solidarity
Protestors outside Downing Street in London, March 2015. Image: Étienne von Bertrab For me, the most significant definition of solidarity is expressed in the words of Eduardo Galeano’s, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Elections and the homeless: who is heard?
Image: Courtesy of the Electoral Commission/Flickr via Homeless Link With the UK elections creeping up on us, on the 7th May, I’d like to grapple with the volatile question of elections for who? Given...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MSc DAP field trip and the tragedy in Kathmandu
“Nepal relief location map” by Uwe Dedering – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons If the world today were as it was a little over one week ago, 35 students on the Development...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Snapshots of the urban economy: Mekelle, Ethiopia
For the past 10 days I’ve been with staff and students of the MSc Urban Economic Development in Mekelle, Ethiopia. They have been making sense of economic development by exploring four broad topics,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Building Partnerships for South-South Cooperation
Considering the increased focus on South-South Cooperation development dialogue and India’s long standing presence in assisting development in various regions of the world, the UK Department for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Impediments to Development: A Cursory View of Nigeria
What is development? Source: Sun.Star http://gallery.sunstar.com.ph/Editorial-Cartoons/i-hWjMJP8 There is no universally accepted definition of development. Different definitions and measurements...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Business-civic leadership’s urban social responsibility
Mainstream economics attributes economic performance to factor endowments; the characteristics of a national or regional economy expected to impact future output growth and wages. These can be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Evolving Cuba. The Need for a Planned Transition.
It was the end of November. Only four days had passed since I went back to Mexico after finishing my studies at the DPU. I found myself in Havana, enjoying the outdoors without having to wear a coat. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
From theory to practice: Real life social policy for development
When I was undergoing my masters degree in Social Development Practice at the DPU, I was consistently amazed by the insight that development gurus provided when discussing and critiquing the design of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Power and Politics: A reflection on political settlement
To many – perhaps more today than in some generations past – ‘politics’ is a dirty word. Yet the political permeates our social lives on the most personal of levels as well as more generally. And the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
If Habitat III wants to uphold the right to housing, it needs to address...
At the start of April, a number of civil society groups, members of NGOs and activists from across Europe met in Barcelona for the European meeting of the Global Platform for the Right to the City....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Citywide upgrading strategies in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: three years of engagement
In a famous picture of Phnom Penh in 1979, two children stand in the foreground looking steadily at the camera, while behind them the city, once the ‘pearl of Asia’, is nothing but a desolated and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How friendships and networks matter for urban economic development
Why do some cities perform so much better than others? According to new research from, Naji P. Makarem, it’s not just down to their resources – both human and physical – but also how people and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Industrial development and business-civic leadership in Nigeria
Why is unemployment and poverty rising in Nigeria, despite over a decade of robust economic growth? According to new research from, Naji P. Makarem, the organized private sector (OPS) has the...
View Article
