Urban Vulnerability, Risk Production and Disaster Prevention: Towards More Inclusive and Sustainable Cities

Dear Colleagues,

Despite an abundance of concepts and policy framings inspired by the SDGs and the UN New Urban Agenda to foster more inclusive and sustainable cities, dynamic urbanization is ongoing, severe hazards affecting urban populations are increasing in both magnitude and frequency, and the growing social complexity in cities continues to be marked by fragmentation, injustice, and conflicts. There continues to be a need to better understand the root causes of inequality, vulnerability, risks, and disastrous outcomes, and to frame viable solutions for rights-based and sustainable urban lifeworlds.

In light of these pressures and stressors on urban livelihoods, research has recently been focusing more on creative, ground-based concepts and initiatives to tackle hazards and mitigate, or prevent, severely detrimental outcomes. For instance, food insecurity is a major trait of the lifeworlds of vulnerable urban residents, and this has been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is now evidence that the pandemic, though severely impacting food security and societal integrity in urban areas in particular, also led to new opportunities and served as an accelerator for so-called “bottom-up” innovative concepts to be more widely implemented, increasing environmental sensibility and social connectedness in cities. The pandemic, as a disaster, thus seems to have (paradoxically) opened up spaces and options for new viable livelihood strategies and promising solutions to emerge.

To better understand such transformations of cities and urban lifeworlds, we need to explore how risks are socially produced, and how this may lead to the creation and, on the other hand, the prevention of detrimental or disastrous outcomes. This Special Issue therefore invites the submission of the latest theory-based, empirical, and/or applied-oriented articles on the emergence or mitigation of urban vulnerability, and on the role risk(s) play(s) in this context. Ideally, papers highlight barriers and opportunities for citizen-oriented concepts which attempt to contribute to more socially inclusive, just, and sustainable urban living environments.

We welcome contributions from, e.g., a dedicated risk and disaster research perspective, articles touching on the latest strands of urban transformation, and those drawing on experience with transformative research concepts. Original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas and contributions may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Inter-linkages between urban vulnerability, social exclusion, and livelihood threats (including exposure to natural hazards, conflicts, etc., in cities);
• Processes of risk production and disaster prevention in urban living environments;
• New concepts to mitigate threats (including more technology- and/or environment-oriented concepts, e.g., nature-based solutions, urban green infrastructure, and/or urban nature conservation, as well as new participatory research, urban governance, or policy approaches such as transformative research);
• Empirical evidence from across the globe, including from cities from the so-called “Global South”, of urban social exclusion/inclusion, urban food (in)security, and creative and/or innovative ideas and initiatives towards the creation of more rights-based, socially and environmentally sustainable urban lifeworlds (studies based on qualitative-interpretative approaches are particularly welcome).

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Fred Krüger
Prof. Dr. Axel Drescher
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• urban risk
• disasters
• urban citizenship
• social connectedness
• just city
• urban ecosystems
• food security
• urban livelihoods
• urban transformation
• transformative research
• social theory