Urbanization continues to drive informal settlement growth on land exposed to hazards such as landslides, increasing risk among low-income populations. Though technical and social ways of managing landslide risk are known, in developing countries these measures are often difficult to implement because of complex social, economic, political, and institutional reasons. We present the findings from a pilot research project in Medellín, Colombia, which aimed to explore the scope for, and acceptability of, landslide risk-reducing strategies for informal settlements from the community and state perspectives; understand the barriers to landslide riskreducing strategies; and identify politically and practically viable approaches to such strategies within a wider and more complex context of social and physical risk in the area. Focusing on the latter objective, we compare two forms of community-local government spaces for negotiation that were used during the project (a Cabildo Abierto and a joint local government-community Working Group), applying Fung's "democratic cube" to their analysis. This helps understand their different nature, but also raises questions about the ability of Fung's model to address governance arrangements related to so-called informal settlements in the Global South, and the need to revisit this model drawing on context-sensitive approaches and insights on informal governance arrangements from the growing literature on service coproduction. The key conclusions highlight the importance of overcoming the state-community stand-off over land occupation rights in Medellín, which is also found in self-built neighborhoods worldwide, by reorienting the problem away from conventional longterm land use planning issues toward issues of safety in the short and medium term, together with an incremental approach, in opening up opportunities to develop wider negotiated mitigation of landslide risk at a more strategic level involving both community and local government.

A global ageing population presents opportunities and challenges to designing urban environments that support ageing in place. The World Health Organization's Global Age-Friendly Cities movement has identified the need to develop communities that optimise health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age. Ensuring that age-friendly urban environments create the conditions for active ageing requires cities and communities to support older adults’ rights to access and move around the city (‘appropriation’) and for them to be actively involved in the transformation (‘making and remaking’) of the city. These opportunities raise important questions: What are older adults’ everyday experiences in exercising their rights to the city? What are the challenges and opportunities in supporting a rights to the city approach? How can the delivery of age-friendly cities support rights to the city for older adults? This paper aims to respond to these questions by examining the lived experiences of older adults across three cities and nine neighbourhoods in the United Kingdom. Drawing on 104 semi-structured interviews with older adults between the ages of 51 and 94, the discussion centres on the themes of: right to use urban space; respect and visibility; and the right to participate in planning and decision-making. These themes are illustrated as areas in which older adults’ rights to access and shape urban environments need to be addressed, along with recommendations for age-friendly cities that support a rights-based approach.

Mobile applications to manage disaster risks have been gaining more and more acceptance internationally. Mexico City has not been the exception and in the last five years its production and use by the government has increased. However, the main function of these applications has been merely informative and the role of inhabitants basically passive. This has been the case of communication and information technologies in the case of floods. Therefore, the objective of this work was to identify the potential and the conditions for the development and use of mobile applications to manage flood risk in Mexico City in a co-management context, as a result of a long-term research project. From two case studies, the most important functions in the voice of the population were identified from interviews and focus groups and later these functions were systematized and intended to be technified in a mobile application. The process allowed us to see the potential of digital co-management of flood risk supported by technology, and at the same time, to identify the different conditioning factors. On the one hand, among the most important potentials are the optimization of resources and the possible reduction of losses during floods. Similarly, it was observed that a co-production process with the population at risk increases the probability of acceptance of the technology. But on the other hand, various spatial, administrative, legislative and technical factors were identified that condition the use of this type of technology at the local level, such as the difficulties imposed by the territorial scale, and the administrative interlinks within the several dependencies responsible for both, risk management and for the production of mobile applications, for which recommendations are proposed.

Talking about climate change is talking about a global concern, where international organizations set the guidelines for its treatment. However, each country has its own legislation and organization that create mechanisms outlined towards the adaptation, mitigation or monitoring of risks associated to climate change in vulnerable areas. For the case of hydrometeorological risks, it is necessary to identify which are the main government agencies associated with climate change in Mexico to observe what exists and how it works in order to identify instruments, policies and laws that affect the areas of action of adaptation, mitigation and monitoring of this type of risk. Therefore, based on a search methodology in digital information sources on government websites and documents, the topics related to climate change were classified into four categories: (1) Units responsible for the management, administration and execution of these topics; (2) Systems associated with such dependencies; (3) Laws and guidelines that regulate climate change in Mexico; and (4) Instruments that derive from such dependencies that support the main areas of action regarding adaptation, mitigation and monitoring of disaster risk. It was found that the analysis of the information is viable at three levels: national, state and municipal, where it is observed an inequitable production between levels of programs, instruments, strategies and funds. The government agencies have similarities between the objectives outlined for climate change. However, it is difficult to down-scale the information to the municipal level, where a higher promotion of adaptation and mitigation is observed more in terms of management rather than in operative actions. In addition, in the laws that govern these dependencies there are disconnections between the three levels so that efforts are duplicated, or objectives are not concluded, and most of the laws do not present clear references to international frameworks. The results could be useful to understand and formulate strategies and policy recommendations to reduce risks associated to climate change in Mexico.

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