Resources

Stories and insights

	Building Climate Resilience in the Slums Through Storytelling In this Blog post, Phillip Dinga - a climate change and emissions expert - share insights on how storytelling can help raising awareness about Climate Change and closing the communication gap between informal communities and local governments.
	Tackling Climate Change in Kampala's Informal Settlements For the Bwaise community, poor solid waste disposal practices are exacerbating flooding as waste clogs drains in the community. When it rains, the dilapidated and makeshift shelters that make up the majority of homes in the community are often immersed in the floodwater. This story tells how Tree Adoption Uganda, with funding from Cities Alliance, is responding to poor disposal of garbage in Bwaise.
	What if you bought a new home — but you don’t have the papers to prove it? In this Blog post, Jessica Robey and Illana Melzer of 71point4 share insights on how a Transaction Support Centre is helping households in South Africa obtaining their title deeds.
	Helping Informal Communities Realize Tenure Security: The Social Tenure Domain Model Our grantee Pamoja Trust shares insight into an innovative, pro-poor, gender- and youth- responsive tool for inclusive, sustainable, and strong urban communities.
	Talking Transformation: Blockchains and Housing Ladders Kecia Rust (CAHF) and Illana Melzer (71Point4) talk about the housing market in South Africa and present how the Transaction Support Centre is assisting lower income property owners with title deed and other property-related problems.
	Migration and Shaping the Inclusive City: the Case of Durban, South Africa This Cities Alliance Catalytic Fund project applies a gendered lens to analyse the rise of xenophobia in Durban by creating a platform for migrant women to voice their experiences and explore challenges faced by migrant groups in the city.

Lessons learned from our initiatives

	Download Stronger partnerships and local innovations: tackling new climate realities in cities Local governments and organized community groups are key actors for effective and sustainable interventions to reduce risks and build resilience in cities. Meanwhile, local civil society and the private sector are also relevant stakeholders and bridge builders, helping to enhance capacities and ensure successful collaboration. Incremental climate adaptation solutions that bring together and draw on the complementary strengths of local governments and communities have a critical role to play. This report highlights key lessons learned from the implementation of projects in Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Liberia. It also presents recommendations in support of community-driven climate action in urban areas through citywide infrastructure, policy changes at the municipal and national levels, inclusive development and increased climate adaptation funding.
	Download Securing Tenure in African Cities: learnings from five small-scale, incremental innovations led by local NGOs and social entrepreneurs Technology can play a key role by making land tenure management more accessible, transparent, and efficient, both for city authorities and the urban poor. The publication shows the potential of inclusive, bottom-up solutions mixing the use of modern technologies and participatory approaches to help address some of the challenges linked to tenure insecurity. It analyses five pilot projects in DRC, Zanzibar, South Africa, Ivory Coast and Kenya, as part of the Secure Tenure in African Cities: Micro Funds for Community Innovation initiative.
	Download Do You Know Your City? Results from collaborative data initiatives to drive innovation in cities This publication aims to contribute to the debate on data and cities by highlighting 11 innovative data initiatives that represent diversity in implementing organisation, contexts, policy sectors and approaches for data collection and use. It highlights common characteristics and challenges that we hope will inspire other local actors to explore new ways of using data and information to get to know and transform our cities.
	Download Youth and the City: Lessons From 13 Innovative Projects Funded by the Cities Alliance Catalytic Fund and the UN-Habitat Youth Fund Youth accounts for a significant portion of the world’s population. Working from the assumption that young people create a “demographic dividend” with important contributions to their communities, Cities Alliance and UN-Habitat took advantage of a unique opportunity to learn from leaders of youth city development projects from diverse urban contexts. Both organisations have established funding mechanisms to support innovative city development projects led by and/or focused on young people. This publication highlights lessons learned from six of the Youth and the City projects, as well as six additional UN-Habitat projects.