Guidebooks for Displacement-Sensitive & Climate-Resilient Urban Planning in Somalia

In Somalia, displacement is overwhelmingly an urban challenge. Climate instability and conflict have accelerated urbanization, making Somalia one of the most rapidly urbanizing countries in the world. 

More than 80% of internally-displaced persons (IDPs) are in urban areas where they have better access to livelihoods and humanitarian aid. Because rural migrants, IDPs and other newcomers to cities are there to stay, this project sought to go beyond emergency response and recovery programming to develop more durable solutions to displacement-accelerated urbanization. 

The multistakeholder coordination, anticipatory action, and multidimensional approach at the heart of urban planning offer promising avenues for durable solutions to displacement and provide a bridge between inclusive, resilient development and humanitarian response in cities. In the near-term, humanitarian and development organizations must invest in urban infrastructure and services to protect IDPs and their host communities, collectively known as displacement-affected communities (DACs). They should also strive to get ahead of growth by identifying urban land for infill development and greenfield land for urban expansion planning. Anticipatory investments in land reduce complexity and cost in the long run. Longer-term, investments in urban planning and governance provide urgently needed practices for multilevel institutional development. 

However, conventional urban planning and local governance practices often fall short of including newcomers as many local governments don't want to recognize them as urban citizens and therefore claim responsibility for their safety and wellbeing. Many governments also fail to recognize how much IDPs and migrants offer to the local economy and cultural life of their city when they are included in planning decisions (known as local integration in durable solutions programming) instead of being excluded by segregation and neglect, evictions and repeat displacement, or resettlement and return programs. 

To address widespread displacement and climate vulnerability, we must look beyond individual cities to the larger region. Urban planning within cities must be paired with regional coordination across cities. In Somalia, widespread insecurity  and climate instability make people vulnerable to displacement, pushing them to migrate in search of security, services and work. Big urban centers like Mogadishu and Baidoa are being overwhelmed by the influx of IDPs. Investments in small cities and towns throughout a region can give IDPs options closer to home, mitigating their vulnerability to climate and security risks while alleviating pressure on overburdened central cities. Additionally, localizing displacement and migration governance in cities requires political engagement across scales and multilevel institutional investments from the city to the region. 

While national urban policies in big agendas like the National Transformation Plan provide a common language and set of goals for broader coordination, they are often too general and hands-off at the local level. The challenges are known, the needs are urgent, and migrants are arriving everyday. Instead of rehashing this, local and regional plans should focus on where and how to invest in services, informed by the expertise of residents and local planners. 

Within cities, IDPs and the urban poor are vulnerable to multiple climate and social risks and political and economic exclusion. Competition for limited resources also causes tensions between newcomers and hosts and existing land development patterns can reinforce social divisions in cities. DACs need better access to services, livelihoods and secure land tenure, as well as inclusion in local planning and decision-making processes. Inclusive and integrated resilience planning practices can reduce these risks. 

Too often projects recycle the same tired normative, consultant-driven approach. It is impractical and expensive. Poorly-designed and sited investments also inhibit local ownership. Planning models from Western countries are out of place, requiring too many resources. They are also quickly outpaced by the speed and scale of urbanization in Somalia. Few cities in the Global North can manage comprehensive, data-hungry planning processes, let alone resource-poor and data-scarce cities in Somalia. People also grow tired and distrustful of endless drop-in drop-out planning and training exercises when project after project underdeliver. They need to see tangible returns on their investment, balancing urgent needs with longer-term planning.

To meet the  challenges of widespread insecurity, scale of climate risks, and pace of urbanization, Somalia needs localized approaches. These approaches should deliver incremental improvements that, at the same time, strengthen local governance capacities and institutionalize best practices nationally. In this project, we learned from and built on the joint IOM–UN-Habitat initiative to create urban and territorial development strategies for cities and Federal Member States in Somalia. 

To localize both guidebooks, I prioritized an incremental instead of a comprehensive approach so that users can focus on only what they can achieve at the time, working pragmatically and iteratively. I designed simple tools to overcome the triple constraint of limited resources, weak local governance capacities, and scarce data. We paired this with a piloting plan to test and refine the guidebooks through practice and an institutionalization plan to foster local adoption, ownership, standardization, and scaling nationwide. Unfortunately, USAID cuts stopped piloting before it could begin.

Both guidebooks focus on the local integration of displaced people and do not include the other two durables solutions of resettlement or return. 

To integrate IDPs in cities, the city guidebook focuses on getting ahead of growth by identifying land for infill development and urban expansion, as well as in place upgrading of existing informal settlements and IDP camps instead of relocation. Pairing anticipatory action with improvements to already urbanized land reduces DACs' social exclusion, vulnerability to climate risks, and social cohesion among hosts and newcomers. 

The territorial guidebook provides simple tools for analyzing the connections between different settlements in a territory and how they function within a larger interconnected system of movement of people and exchange of resources. By understanding how this system currently functions, regional planners can develop a strategy that coordinates its different parts more fairly and efficiently to overcome challenges and take advantage of opportunities. In displacement contexts, this can provide IDPs migration options closer to home and better access to basic infrastructure and services in cities and towns. 

I designed simple methodologies that prioritize stakeholder workshops, simple data collection tools, and easy GIS mapping techniques, relying on local knowledge in place of complex modeling. The goal is to make urban planning accessible to local governments so that they do not have to rely on expensive external consultants or unrealistic comprehensive planning practices. For international aid organizations, the guidebooks can support efforts to partner with instead of consult for local governments in Somalia, fostering planning processes that empower local leaders and support institutionalization and scaling. 

The guidebooks also seek to integrate methodologies across scales, from community action planning and citywide planning to territorial coordination of development efforts. Planning at each scale should speak to and complement the other scales. Community action planning provides better data for evidence-based planning citywide while citywide planning supports more equitable and efficient spatial planning for key investments. In turn, territorial planning generates data to understand the dynamics of urban systems in the region, providing regional institutions evidence for where to invest in crucial infrastructure and services. 

See more about each guidebook below ↣

Note that the guidebooks are still in draft format (due to the USAID freeze). Because all materials are still drafts, I have only included the About this Guidebook sections for each guidebook. Both include a table of contents that shows all the content in each guidebook as well as an introduction.