Professor Diana Mitlin, CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, has been awarded the best paper of 2024 by Area Development and Policy for The contribution of reform coalitions to inclusion and equity: lessons from urban social movements.

The open access paper highlights how urban reform coalitions – diverse groups of stakeholders who come together to push for improvements – can contribute to inclusive and equitable urban change in the global South.

The paper finds that while reform coalitions themselves are not ‘silver bullets’ they have the potential to catalyse important change in the face of significant oppositional forces.

 

 

It also describes the dynamics and impact of four case studies that  Professor Mitlin has been engaged with including the Urban Resource Centre (URC), Karachi, Pakistan; city development committees and the Community Organisation Development Institute (CODI), Thailand; municipal development forums (MDFs), Uganda; and the Mukuru Special Planning Area, Nairobi, Kenya.

Professor Mitlin states in the paper:

“Through my work at the International Institute for the Environment and Development and then the University of Manchester over three decades, I have engaged with the leaders of urban social movements, the staff of NGO support agencies and activist–scholars in discussions about how urban social justice might be furthered through coalition-building.

This work has involved collaboration with local government officials and, in some cases, national ministry officials. These discussions, taking place over three decades, have been within research and action research projects to advance inclusive equitable urban development.”

The role of researchers and universities is central to this analysis and experience. Professor Mitlin highlights that “Understanding coalitions, I believe, requires understanding how action, including knowledge generation at neighbourhood and city scales, navigates the potential and constraints embedded within prevailing political economies.”

The role of knowledge generation in catalysing inclusive urban change is being taken forward by the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) – particularly its move from undertaking holistic scoping research into the politics, systems and urban development domains of different cities, to using this analysis to inform action research based interventions.

Professor Sam Hickey, Head of the Global Development Institute, who was also deputy CEO of ACRC, said:

“Diana is a truly inspiring researcher whose work pushes forward academic debates and, through her longstanding partnerships with community-based organisations, helps create real change. It’s great to see her recent paper on reform coalitions recognised by Area Development and Policy, as it neatly encapsulates both Diana’s exemplary academic insights as well as her deep commitment to social justice.”

ACRC is doing further work to explore and better understand the potential of reform coalitions:

• Read the open access paper
• Read more on reform coalitions from Diana Mitlin: Citizen-government coalitions could hold the key to the reform of African cities
• Watch Diana present ACRC’s approach to catalysing urban reform
• Listen to the African Cities podcast series on urban reform coalitions:
  • Inclusive urban reform coalitions with Diana Mitlin
  • Urban reform coalitions: Harare with George Masimba
  • Urban reform coalitions: Freetown with Joseph Macarthy
  • Urban reform coalitions: Kampala with Shuaib Lwasa
  • Urban reform coalitions: The role of researchers
  • Urban reform coalitions: Foregrounding tacit knowledge with Lalitha Kamath
• Recap on key takeaways from ACRC’s 2023 conference on urban reform coalitions
• Sign up for regular email updates as the ACRC project moves forward

 

Note:  This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.

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