UPD Department Lecture: David Sanderson, “Responding to Urban Disaster: Where Are the Architects and Planners?”

David Sanderson, Visiting Professor of Urban Planning

‘Natural’ urban disasters in poorer countries are on the increase. Yet for most aid agencies, working ‘in the field’ is the byword for aid response, given that almost all of their approaches are rurally derived. It is therefore unsurprising that architects and planners do not populate aid work. This session asks, what is needed for urban specialists to be relevant to the burgeoning need of urban humanitarian response? How can they shape humanitarian aid, and what needs to change for aid agencies to meet the new ‘urban game-changer’?

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