Urban Risk Exhibition: cLIMA sin Riesgo

​In Lima, like in most cities across the global south, bio-physical and socio-economic risk drivers are deeply entangled, producing cycles of risk accumulation and unequal exposure. This situation has severe impacts on the everyday lives, livelihoods and assets of the urban poor as well as the city’s ecological and socio-economic future. However, the way that everyday hazards and episodic, small-scale disasters accumulate to produce urban ‘risk traps’ is still poorly understood by the academic sphere and policy makers alike.

The cLIMA sin Riesgo exhibition emerges out of an action-research project lead by the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London in collaboration with partner organisations and local communities in Lima and with the support of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN).

The project works with the inhabitants of two settlements in the historic city centre and periphery of Lima. It focuses on so-called ‘urban risk traps’, by which we mean the accumulation of risks – such as fires, respiratory illnesses and building collapses – that form part of the everyday realities of impoverished and marginalised citizens living in precarious conditions and hazardous locations.

This exhibition continues on from its previous show at the Building Centre in London in 2015 as well as various locations in Lima, which focused on the precessor project ReMap Lima. This project explored the potential of using advanced technologies in conjunction with the participatory mapping of urban development. Using cameras on a drone, then printing a 3D map filled out with information gathered by local residents, the project enabled local citizens to visualise urban development processes and make them visible to local authorities, institutions and residents.

‘cLIMA sin Riesgo’ explores pathways for just and resilient urban development in the context of spatial and social segregation and climate uncertainty. The exhibition aims to stimulate reflections on just and resilient cities through videos, models, photos and panels that explain how local women and men in the world’s second-largest desert city live and manage preventable everyday risks. The exhibition also explores people’s actions to improve their living and housing conditions and links them to government programmes and policies in the sectors of urban planning and disaster risk reduction in order to find strategies and scenarios to interrupt urban risk traps.