Recent experiences of socio-environmental disasters in Latin America have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the state as a social actor in the organisation, coordination and implementation of adequate public policies to face these emergencies. This affects the most vulnerable urban areas, leading to unequal levels of impact from crises and disasters within cities. As a response, local collective actions, led by citizens, have emerged to manage risks. In Medellín, Colombia, in the context of the current COVID-19 crisis, our research identified a diverse repertoire of collective actions within informal, vulnerable communities, including collaboration towards improving food security, sanitation, pedagogy for self-care and prevention, and financial aid. Although these actions have had limited scope within the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they demonstrate the need to promote a more proactive interaction between society and the state, based on a series of agreed interventions, promoting the exchange of knowledge and articulation of actions in the production and improvement of informal urban areas. This research explores how these collective actions have developed through a set of semi-structured interviews with community leaders and key actors in Medellín, with a view to identifying lessons for state-community dynamics in relation to disaster risk management and achieving a more integrated approach to improving habitat conditions within vulnerable urban areas. This work demonstrates that vulnerable communities in informal urban settlements can actively address their exposure to risk through locally-oriented, bottom-up collective actions. However, key linkages with institutional frameworks are needed to strengthen state-community dynamics and facilitate sustainable, inclusive and equitable development in cities.

Smart city approaches have tended to be top-down, techno-centric/corporate and expensive approaches which are promoted by large, global companies. Smart city narratives focus on their expected capacity to improve citizens’ quality of life. However, can technology-driven and municipally-led smart city initiatives address the issues faced by poor and vulnerable communities in urban and peri-urban areas? This paper explores key aspects of the implementation of smart city approaches in the Global South taking as a case study the Colombian city of Medellín, which has been recognized internationally for its social innovation and is considered a smart city by the Inter-American Development Bank. The paper draws on a local, national and international literature review; interviews with key local stakeholders involved in smart city initiatives; and an international workshop on smart cities and community data management organized by the authors in Medellín and bringing together three perspectives: academia, government and community. The paper provides a reflection on the concept of smart city, data management and citizen participation in smart city initiatives in Medellín, contrasting each of these with the literature. Our research found gaps between broader conceptualisations and community-oriented intentions in smart city initiatives in Medellín, as well as very low uptake and reported impact of such initiatives. We conclude that a redefinition of smart city approaches that may respond to the needs of the population while improving liveability is still urgently needed, and we set out a series of questions for an international research agenda on low-income community-oriented smart city research.

The Galapagos archipelago represents an insular system with finite natural resources, a growing population, and an economy heavily weighted on tourism that leaves it vulnerable to shocks, such as the Covid-19 crisis. This work proposes an alternative scenario developed through creating intersections between water-energy-food (WEF) nexus and adaptive co-management (ACM) approaches to resource management. This framework allows the identification of novel synergies that are applied to the analysis of Galapagos as case study. Within this approach, qualitative analysis is applied to data collected via a set of interviews with local stakeholders (including community, business, third sector, and government actors) to evaluate (i) how a deeper understanding of community perceptions and needs can help to identify pathways toward more sustainable development in line with conservation goals, (ii) what governance frameworks should be implemented to promote community-based resource management and resilience, and (iii) what role education and capacitation can play in supporting alternative forms of economic activity. The research suggests that the implementation of an integrated WEF-ACM framework for resource management in Galapagos could promote resilience by opening a space for deliberation and conflict resolution between legitimate stakeholders, thus supporting more effective and balanced participative governance. The current Covid-19 crisis has led to the emergence of alternative forms of community collaboration that demonstrate the potential for a more economically diverse and more sustainable future. By placing different sources of knowledge on a level platform in such a framework, greater community ownership of resource management and conservation goals could be achieved. The incorporation of an ACM approach within the management of WEF resources would also allow Galapagueños to determine their own vision of a future sustainable socio-ecosystem, based on optimising system outcomes by co-identifying the trade-offs and synergies between the interrelated resource sectors, but requires a transformation in institutional culture.

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