From state agencies to ordinary citizens: reframing risk-mitigation investments and their impact to disrupt urban risk traps in Lima, Peru

Urban risk traps, characterized by cycles of everyday risks and small-scale disasters, disproportionately affect impoverished urban dwellers. A study on Lima, Peru, reveals that such traps persist not due to a lack of risk-mitigation investments but because these investments often have unintended consequences that erode the capacity of at-risk communities to act, thereby perpetuating risk accumulation cycles. The research, based on the action-research project cLIMA sin Riesgo, analyzed state agency and community-led investment actions in Barrios Altos (historic center) and José Carlos Mariátegui (periphery). It argues for a re-evaluation of risk-mitigation strategies to disrupt these cycles effectively.

Allen, A., Zilbert Soto, L., Wesely, J., Belkow, T., Ferro, V., Lambert, R., Langdown, I., & Samanamú, A. (2017). From state agencies to ordinary citizens: reframing risk-mitigation investments and their impact to disrupt urban risk traps in Lima, Peru. Environment and Urbanization, 29(2), 477–502. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247817706061