Climate change continues to exacerbate water and sanitation issues in Latin America, as water scarcity and natural disasters threaten water supply and infrastructure. My research explores the role that gender dimension plays in urban water and sanitation projects in Latin America, and examines strategies used to improve urban water and sanitation for low-income dwellers in Lima, Peru and Cochabamba, Bolivia. Both objectives were accomplished based on an extensive literature review. I argue that gender specific data is vital to collect, in that women face significant disparities in treatment and exclusion from policy. I also examined the sustainable solutions introduced by Lima, Peru and Cochabamba, Bolivia, that address severe water shortages, inadequate facilities and ineffective governance. These case studies were analyzed using Gordon McGranahan’s Framework of Challenges describing incentive barriers facing community driven initiatives. This paper exemplifies aspects of lucrative progress from these case studies to identify solutions that can be emulated by other cities. If other cities wish to scale up the findings of my research, some recommendations follow: utilize workshops and collaborative dialogue with citizens who may be affected by projects, collect climate, population and demographic data to observe future trends and finally, prioritize climate change mitigation as soon as possible.

The main goal of this paper is to explore the concept of place and the emotions felt at specific places. The paper is concentrated on power places, places in which people recharge and feel at peace, and places that evoke positive feelings. The reported project is based on a set of mapping experiments conducted in the city of Hamburg, Germany. Participants were asked to map their power places, describe their characteristics and the feelings they feel at these places. In total, 191 power places were identified, including the descriptions of their physical characteristics and emotions associated with these places. This paper summarizes the main findings of the empirical work.

The main goal of this paper is to present the conceptual framework for engaging youth in urban planning activities that simultaneously create locally meaningful positive change. The framework for engaging youth interlinks the use of IT tools such as geographic information systems (GIS), agent-based modelling (ABM), online serious games, and mobile participatory geographic information systems with map-based storytelling and action projects. We summarize the elements of our framework and the first results gained in the program Community Growers established in a neighbourhood community of Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, USA. We conclude the paper with a discussion and future research directions.

A majority of cities across the globe are confronting threats to their natural environment because of worrying trends in indicators such as urban population, PM2.5 air pollution, and CO2 emissions (World Bank 2016). Consequently, several strategies are being used in urban areas to minimise the negative impact of urbanisation on the natural environment. Examples of such strategies are increasing provision of open space and preserving areas that are characterised by high environmental importance. These issues may be less of a problem in public sector practice in the Global North compared to the Global South, because its public institutions generally have more human capital, information and resources to deal with them. For instance, public employees in the Global North have better access to accurate and timely data (Musakwa and van Niekerk 2015; Arsanjani et al. 2016), which produces more effective policies.

Participatory processes have been widely promoted within the field of natural resource management as a method to support efficient resource use. As women are often key stakeholders in natural resource use, the importance of their inclusion in these initiatives has also been stressed. Specifically, research has shown that women’s participation positively impacts outcomes of development initiatives and can transform gendered hierarchies by empowering women in community decision making. However, participatory initiatives are not necessarily inclusive; rather, it has been shown that these processes can exacerbate existing inequalities and specifically, that women can be excluded from participation.

In Kyrgyzstan, participation in irrigation management is organized through Water User Associations (WUAs), or groups of water users responsible for the allocation, scheduling, and delivery of irrigation water. Women make up a small percentage of the members and leaders in these WUAs; however, they are active in agriculture within Kyrgyzstan. Therefore, as irrigation water is vital to livelihoods in agricultural communities, it is important to examine the nature of women’s participation in WUAs.

This study draws upon interviews with WUA officials, village leaders, and female farmers in five communities in southern Kyrgyzstan to explore women’s access to information and participation in WUAs. Based on the analysis, this study reveals that in addition to gender, personal characteristics such as class and age, as well as geographical location can limit women’s access to information and exclude them from membership and leadership. However, women are also strategic in how they choose to participate. These findings suggest the need to reassess the participatory process in WUAs in order to increase inclusion and demonstrates gendered participation in natural resource management.

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This paper concentrates on power places as perceived by the students in a 60,000 people college town in the United States. Power places are favourite outdoor locations that evoke positive emotions, and are conducive to relaxation and reduction of stress. Further understanding how location affects those places and the feelings of students will help planners and designers be more intentional as they create conditions favourable to the development of cities that are healthy, sustainable, resilient and smart. Research methodologies used in this paper include empirical cartography, mapping and space syntax. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the presented results and further research directions.

This paper examines how beneficiaries of Brazil’s Bolsa Família (BFP) conditional cash transfer program find employment in a Brazilian municipality, and assesses their participation in decent work. Using Belo Horizonte as a case study, researchers conducted a survey of BFP recipients. The paper compares responses of informally and formally employed workers to assess how their employment meets the criteria of the decent work agenda. Results indicate no significant difference between perceptions of formal and informal employees concerning discrimination and poor working conditions. Findings lead to recommendations about formalization of employment, coordination with existing job training programs, childcare, and transportation.

Participatory processes have been widely promoted within the field of natural resource management as a method of supporting efficient resource use and, within these processes, much emphasis has been placed on gendered participation. In Kyrgyzstan, participation in irrigation management is organized through water-user associations (WUAs), a decentralized system of management commonly prescribed to increase equity and efficiency in water distribution. Women in Kyrgyzstan are active in irrigated agriculture particularly in light of changing demographics due to labor migration, yet they make up a small percentage of the members and leaders in these WUAs. This study draws upon interviews with WUA officials, village leaders, and female farmers in five communities in southern Kyrgyzstan to examine the determinants of female farmers’ participation in WUAs. We argue that female farmers are strategic in how they choose to irrigate outside of the WUAs as users or participate in WUAs as members or leaders, however their gender, age, and class limits their access to information about WUAs and inclusion in WUA activities. These findings suggest the need to reassess participatory processes in WUAs in order to increase female farmers’ inclusion in WUAs and demonstrates the complexity of gendered participation in natural resource management.