DREAMS – Developing Resilient African cities and their urban environMent facing the provision of essential urban SDGs

The DREAMS project will partner a transdisciplinary team of universities researchers in Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Germany and the United States with municipal planning authorities, NGOs and traditional leaders in the target cities. We will orient our research on a charrette process that is relevant for risk sensitive planning. Charrettes consist of intensive and time- constrained participatory activities.

The Charrettes Process – Overview

1. Screening of existing planning documents and strategies in the municipalities to assess their relevance and impacts on the current formal and informal development of the cities from a backwards looking perspective.
2. Identify terms of reference and an engagement strategy that structures the way of involvement of the different actor groups and the methods on how to consult them.
3. Identify planning targets, problems and opportunities on how to improve formal and informal planning processes, gaps in the current planning systems (“planning of informal settlements outside the legal borders of a municipality”) and adaptation needs for the future.
4. Participatory scenario modelling including in-time assessment of planning impacts on capacities, trade-offs and risks for urban ecosystem services and socio-economic services will be implemented by using the integrated scenario modelling and impact assessment tool GISCAME to co-develop joint visions for the future city development.
5. Integrated assessment to uncover benefits and trade-offs.
6. integrated strategic planning documents. These documents are planned to be co-developed with representatives from planning at municipal level, but also from territorial planning, since they need to be harmonized with the given legal frame and planning hierarchies.
7. Action plans on how and where the city can grow or where corridors should be kept open, obtained through the integrated strategic planning documents, which address how to guide the future development under consideration of different development scenarios and driver constellations.
8. Monitoring