Shaping Urban Futures
Shaping Urban Futures is the first in a series of Case Study Reports. It explores examples of two cities adopting radically transformative approaches to global challenges — the Care System in Bogotá, Colombia, and refugee integration in Gaziantep, Turkey.
The Care System in Bogotá, Colombia, is a system designed in response to the gendered division of care work that had become increasingly pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of the system is to place unpaid care work at the centre of decision-making to alleviate the burdens affecting care workers and encourage a more equitable distribution of care by gender.
The second case study concerns refugee integration in Gaziantep, a Turkish city on the Turkey-Syria border which has adopted a leading approach to integrating displaced Syrian refugees into the city. Despite not having formal responsibilities for the refugee response, and without any additional funding from central government, municipal leaders in Gaziantep were early proponents of the long-term integration of refugees and leveraged partnerships with international organisations and NGOs to facilitate their social and economic integration. Motivated by humanitarian ideals and a pragmatic desire for social cohesion, the city’s experimentation with approaches to integration at the local level serves as an important case study to inform refugee policy, both at the national and international levels.
These case studies were developed based on site visits conducted by the secretariat research team and interviews with key officials and beneficiaries involved in both cases. Council Members Chan Heng Chee and Richard Sennett provided analytical commentary to the report.
