Interrogating Urban Crisis Representation and Response

We are living in an era of global crisis, yet state and external responses in cities are often problematic, as the Covid pandemic revealed. Faced with disasters or conflict, top-down responses may not be sensitive to local contexts, and may worsen conditions for marginalised communities, for example through curfews or military intervention. For some communities, everyday problems such as violence, poverty, and displacement may be more significant than singular events such as natural disasters, political unrest or financial crisis. Additionally, crises are socially constructed, and how a crisis is defined or represented may privilege some forms of knowledge and experience, while ignoring others. This suggests the need to examine the underlying assumptions of crisis representations, exploring not just the effectiveness of responses, but also how crises are framed, and whose framings dominate.

In response, this project aims to explore local perspectives and experiences of diverse types of crisis in urban areas, focusing on the lived experiences of marginalised communities. It seeks to understand how crisis representations and crisis responses are related, in order to assess the effectiveness of crisis responses, and suggest improvements. It will do this using storytelling and other qualitative methods to compare representations and responses in four cities in South Africa and Colombia: Cape Town, Johannesburg, Cali and Buenaventura. The project is a collaboration involving the universities named above, and local organisations in the four cities. You are being invited to collaborate as a local organisation.

Methodology

By examining the lived experiences of marginalised populations and using an innovative comparative storytelling approach, this project examines how crises are framed and responded to, as well as the very con to enhance urban crisis response effectiveness. The research utilised a mixed-methods approach, including:

• Interviews: Conducting interviews with representatives of a civil society organisation or local government department involved in crisis response.
• Storytelling: Participants from Cape Town and Johannesburg have contributed to our collection of narratives in the form of podcasts, storybooks and video, each offering a distinct glimpse into their experiences of crisis. The participants are members of the three partner organisations: SERI, Equal Education and Project90 by 2030.

Outputs

Crisis Representation Project Stories from South Africa. Produced by research participants in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Watch their stories here.