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