Identification

Title

Scale, urban risk and adaptation capacity in neighborhoods of Latin American cities

Abstract

While urbanites are vulnerable to a suite of risks that climate change might aggravate (e.g., mortality from extreme temperatures and property damages from floods), urban populations and decision makers may also be positioned to most effectively respond to such risks. Research is needed however, exploring both the multilevel factors and processes that determine urban risk and the complex pathways from hazards to impacts, and from perceptions and coping responses to adaptation. This paper analyzes whether and under what circumstances urban populations experience risk in selected Latin American neighborhoods of Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Mexico and Santiago; it assesses their adaptation capacity, i.e., ability to perceive and respond to hazards. It finds that urban risk depends on scale: hazards, adaptation capacities, responses and their underlying societal and physical drivers vary across urban households, neighborhoods and cities. Informality is a state of regulatory flux, where access to land and livelihood options cannot be fixed and mapped according to any prearranged sets of laws and planning mechanisms, that has a profound influence on risk and adaptation capacities across scales. For instance, informality becomes the site of considerable state power where some forms of growth in risk-prone areas enjoy state sanction while others are criminalized. The informal status becomes both a source of stigmatization that disempowers informal neighborhoods and a systemic determinant of lack of access to assets and options for adaptation capacity.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76974h4

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2014-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact