Gridding Equitable Urban Futures in Areas of Transition (GREAT) in Cali, Colombia and Havana, Cuba

The success and failure of initiatives tackling the infrastructural gap in most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are closely related to trends across a region where poverty affects one in every three households and informality is the norm for 57 per cent of the working population (UN-Habitat 2016, 55). Informality itself constitutes a challenge as seen in the reluctance of authorities to invest in areas which, by virtue of not being recognised as legal, fall into a void which neither attracts public investment nor does it encourage entrepreneurs or cooperatives to seek localised relevant solutions. The contrast between Colombia and Cuba provides a unique opportunity to understand the additional challenges that areas in transition - to peace, in the former, and to a new constitution, in the latter - pose to informality and will contribute to developing the kinds of approaches through which these challenges can be addressed more effectively.

Building on well-developed partnerships and the learning of several RCUK-funded projects, GREAT will generate real change in two informal off-grid settlements in Cali (Colombia) and Havana (Cuba). Focusing on transport and waste-management community-led projects, the project will contribute to 'gridding' equitable urban futures through a series of three thematic PublicLabs on urban policy, mobility, and waste innovation. These will combine several in-site activities, participatory workshops, seed-funded projects, capacity training, and work with local policy and planning authorities as well as charitable organisations. Joining the expertise of environmental scientists, transport and geomatics engineers, designers, urban planners, entrepreneurs and sociologists, the project will address key SDGs (5, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 16), by embedding the voice of residents of these settlements into ongoing initiatives such as the Territories of Inclusion and Opportunities, an initiative of the Cali Mayor's Office, and the vision of transport in Havana in 2035, approved in 2003, and led by the Dirección General de Transporte Provincial La Habana (General Directorate of Transport Havana). Both institutions are project partners. In doing so, we seek to answer two main questions: In what ways does being on- and off-grid provide an opportunity to rethink the relationship between people and urban infrastructure in areas of transition? To what extent do current off-grid policies and initiatives in Cali and Havana contribute to the disenfranchisement or empowerment of residents in informal settlements? If funded, the project will transform our understanding of the relationship between urban infrastructure and the dynamics of growth and change of informal settlements in areas of transition and provide unique learning points to help address important barriers residents of informal settlements face to improve their livelihoods, in Colombia and Cuba, and across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Our ambition for the GREAT project goes well beyond opening up new scientific boundaries. The project has been designed with stakeholders to support production of lasting transformative human and material infrastructures for equitable urban futures. By promoting collaboration we aim to infrastructure or grid capacity for good urban living that is better integrated and more easily shared, where experimentation is embraced and, as a result, adoption accelerated. Through this we aim to make Cali and Havana places where innovators and academics come to learn, develop and deploy solutions in dialogue with civil society and publics attentive to the social requirements for development, local social innovation and wider societal concerns. GREAT has already begun collaborative development of the research programme through dialogue with local partners and beneficiaries. These have shaped the research needs which the project should address (such as socio-technical enterprises led by women) but also how the project will operate. In particular, we have established a group of interested beneficiaries who will bid for seed-funding to develop transport and solid waste solutions via the project PublicLabs. This will ensure innovations are initiated and critically reviewed from the perspective of citizens, decision-makers, businesses, and policy from the outset and that this is used to impact design of future infrastructures and policies. Data mapping will identify relevant factors with stakeholders so that it is clear what data is available to share. This will also help with identification of data gaps and needs. The PublicLabs will bring together local communities, entrepreneurs, local and national government partners engaged in urban and transport development. These events will 'grid' for collaboration and coordination by experimenting with and stimulating collaborative projects which grow infrastructural innovations in Cali and Havana, delivering tangible change. This is an important part of creating human infrastructures through experimentation and applied research. Experimentation will create opportunities for learning about on/off grid experiences alongside innovation deployment lessons. We will deliver policy impact by involving relevant partners from the outset (Mayor's Office in Cali and the Transport Directorate in Havana). In addition, Policy Round Tables will be run in both cities as part of the project flagship conferences. In the first six months, two analyses of the policy framework will be produced, one per city, which will feed into the in-site workshops with communities and will help structure our programme of work. In Year 2 the policy briefings will report on preliminary findings to promote greater understanding between settlement residents, urban planners and policy makers (in time to influence relevant city-wide policies). In Year 3 there is flexibility to adapt but we anticipate briefings on critical actions to promote equitable urban futures. In addition, local communication campaigns, regular website and social media updates will disseminate funding calls, events and outputs to a wider audience. Significant additional beneficiaries include the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, volunteer organisations in situ, UN Volunteers, and the Digital Humanitarian Network, the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities Network in which Cali is a member. They will be invited to PublicLab events and benefit from enhanced human and organisational infrastructures to coordinate their own future activities with communities in informal settlements, focusing on disaster risk management, and at a time outside the remit and time plan of our project. GREAT will provide new opportunities for long-term relationships and new methodologies for coordinated better action in this and other areas where a context-specific understanding of informality is key.