Urban Crises and Humanitarian Response: A Literature Review

Many international actors have yet to become operationally effective in responding to crises affecting urban areas. In an effort to help address these challenges, this paper aims to inform DFID’s current work on urban humanitarian response through assessing the current state of literature on the subject, with a particular focus on both the impacts of crises and humanitarian responses on urban areas. Overall, the paper emphasises the need to reframe the problematic away from an emphasis on good/‘best’ practices and towards the need to better understand urban systems and processes as a basis for informing more contextually appropriate and dynamic urban responses. The main body of this review is structured around four main themes: complex/diverse communities; infrastructure systems; markets; and local governance structures and capacities.