At the same time, city authorities themselves are confronted with challenges posed by crises, such as a sudden population influx. This includes the burden imposed on already-limited resources and infrastructure, potential social tensions between host and displaced communities, and the possibility of displacement crisis becoming protracted. In a disaster setting, the challenge becomes how to ensure services become operational again, and repairing damaged shelter and infrastructure, in a context where there may have been pre-existing deficiencies.

These challenges have to be taken into account by humanitarian agencies operating in urban settings, where there are many more stakeholders involved in a humanitarian response than a more ‘traditional’ camp setting.

Problems are particularly acute for displaced populations. In 2016, 60 per cent of refugees were living in urban areas. There remains a lack of clarity about where displaced populations are living in cities, and what they are doing to survive.

In cities, refugees and internally displaced peoples (IDPs) face additional deprivations that are not faced by other low-income populations – in particular, there are concerns around their protection, and they may face legal and language barriers. They may also face challenges in ensuring their health and livelihoods – similar concerns that would face urban populations affected by a disaster.

So what can be done to help urban and humanitarian stakeholders (including local governments) increase their knowledge and technical capacity and better be able to meet the immediate needs of cities and urban residents affected by crises?

How can crisis response in urban settings meet emergency needs, but also foster recovery and sustainable development, and strengthen preparedness for future events?

There is also a danger of a disconnect between immediate emergency responses and long-term development programming and ways of working. Where does an emergency end and recovery and ‘normal’ development begin?

Resolving this issue can be especially problematic in protracted crisis and fragile states – such as the current situation in Syria. In these situations, forward-looking interventions can help to facilitate the best possible future post-crisis. But this requires involvement of different types of actors who might not normally be considered typical in humanitarian responses: urban planners, architects, the local residents themselves.

Urban settings are therefore not straightforward places of intervention for the humanitarian sector.

Local municipal authorities

While international humanitarian agencies tend to have relationships with national government, it is vital to engage with local authorities, as they will be the ones implementing policy. The Tacloban case demonstrates the challenges that can be faced even when national and local authorities are relatively well set up to deal with emergencies.

International humanitarian actors can support municipal authorities in different ways – financially, but also in terms of technical capacity, such as in assessing structural damage to buildings following an earthquake, or in urban planning for the rebuilding process, as well as in supporting coordination of interventions on the ground.

For example, in Tacloban, UN HABITAT collaborated with local government to provide support specifically on urban planning. The advantage of this targeted support meant that the local government staff were introduced to new tools and frameworks; their activities were better coordinated; and areas needing investment and entry points for funding were clearly identified. UN HABITAT was also able to provide other planning support, such as a climate change action plan and climate change vulnerability assessment for the city.

However, due to lack of long-term finance, UN HABITAT could not ensure continuity and integration of the response plan into mainstream planning processes. Funding remains a major constraint for forward-looking responses – processes such as urban planning after disaster are complex, and need to be linked in to mainstream planning schedules, which require funding for multiple years.

Research shows that international humanitarian agencies still too often only collaborate with local actors where there is a requirement for them to do so, for example from the funding agency or the legal system locally. This suggests that international organisations don’t yet fully recognise the benefit of local collaboration, seeing local actors as a tool rather than an asset.

This also perpetuates the perception that local capacity is low, yet local actors hold exactly the local contextual understanding that international actors so need in emergency situations – there is therefore scope to reframe relationships between international and local actors to avoid this ‘instrumentalisation’ of local actors.

Refugee communities

The Syrian crisis has led to massive inflows of refugees to neighbouring Lebanon. This country, with a population of 5.9 million, is hosting 1.5 million Syrian refugees, one million of which are registered with UNHCR.

Addressing the huge scale of need in Lebanon has served to underscore the importance of collaboration with local institutions. Research on the response in Lebanon to the Syrian refugee influx highlighted a failure by international agencies to identify institutions that could take the lead in urban areas or to set up coordination mechanisms.

This might stem in part from a general lack of understanding by international agencies of the types of institutions active in urban areas, and their capacities – a deficit that could be resolved by developing the urban staffing of international agencies, and spending more time understanding local contexts, rather than immediately stepping in to fill perceived gaps.

Municipalities and humanitarian agencies may also be accountable to different populations: municipal authorities to their electorate, humanitarian agencies to their target group – for example, refugees.

However, there are ways of getting municipalities to consider both their electorate (the hosts) and displaced populations in certain programs, rather than always treating them separately (while recognising that displaced populations may have certain distinct needs, such as around health and language). Area-based approaches, which target a geography rather than a population group, can help improve conditions for local populations as well as the displaced, and avoid creating divisions.

Affected communities are core actors

Local municipalities are an extremely important local actor, but there are many others: local NGOs, community organisations, and businesses.

This wide variety can make it difficult for international agencies to engage with them meaningfully. For example, in Syria, the first responders in besieged urban areas include local non-governmental organisation (LNGO) staff, medical personnel, interim government staff and volunteers.

Volunteer groups

In non-conflict settings, such as following a natural disaster, first responders will include family members, neighbours, and spontaneous volunteer groups. If humanitarian agencies can engage with these actors, this can ensure the interventions are well-targeted and gain local ownership – at the same time, local actors can facilitate this process by networking as a recognised group.

Local volunteers are often best placed to offer an immediate response in an urban emergency: neighbours and relatives know the likely whereabouts of individuals, as well as the layouts of local streets and buildings.

Although the media highlights looting and antisocial activity in disasters, research consistently shows that this is not typical. Instead, groups and individuals usually become more unified and altruistic. It is also a myth that affected communities are essentially passive. Disasters put enormous strain on societies – but they also stimulate citizens to take on new roles and responsibilities in response and recovery.

The desire to help in a crisis is very strong. Yet often the emergence of volunteers in urban disaster response is seen as an implicit challenge to the “command and control” approach of official agencies, with their top-down systems and standard operating procedures. Adopting a more inclusive multi-stakeholder approach can improve the effectiveness of urban emergency response.

This requires a recognition that recovery from crises takes time, and that actions should be driven by local actors and owned by them. This ownership is essential to ensure it’s scaled up across other areas of the city and linkages to city-wide or regional plans and policies. In practice, ABAs need to be informed by multi-sector assessments, usually driven by the humanitarian agencies, but also participatory assessments, which require time to build effective engagement with the affected communities.

The cross-sector nature of ABAs can help to foster collaboration across different types of actors, by breaking down barriers perpetuated by the cluster system – in a localised urban area such as a neighbourhood, shelter cannot be considered separately from infrastructure, for example, or access to health and education facilities.

ABAs should be integrated with any pre-existing local plans, as well as with the various informal and formal institutions active in the area, including local leaders and religious institutions, and build on any previous activities of the organisations involved – but also connect to the city at large. It is also important to collaborate with utilities – supporting rather than substituting their services.

International humanitarian actors can contribute vital technical knowledge. For example, by advising on shelter for disaster victims which also considers the environmental impact of the building materials used, the location and design of the new housing with regard potential future hazards, and the possibility for incremental improvements to the housing as and when the residents can afford them. All of these will mitigate the risk of having to deal with future crises.

In fact, area-based approaches have many similarities to organic community development processes in local neighbourhoods, where informal settlements emerge as well-organised neighbourhoods with their own governance systems and extensive investment in housing and infrastructure.

By nature this process is usually participatory and multi-sectoral. The fact that settlements may arise in areas without legal land tenure may mean that humanitarian agencies are reluctant to engage – though they could play a role in advocating for legal recognition of settlements with city authorities.

Where humanitarian agencies can support community development, they should work within local structures so that processes can continue when funding is discontinued. The value added of humanitarian agencies is that they may be able to foster inclusion of certain marginalised groups such as IDPs or refugees, by supporting their integration across a neighbourhood, hence reducing tensions and catalysing change.

Community investments in the local area may continue beyond humanitarian project lifetimes, and incremental housing improvements are often required to fit in with household budgetary constraints. Area-based approaches should not and cannot be considered time-bound projects as development will continue organically.