Humanitarian crises, manifest through displacement and disasters, are increasingly striking urban settings. And with more than 50 per cent of the world’s population now living in urban areas, there are many lives at stake.

The reality of growing cities, with existing deficits in infrastructure and services leading to marginalised populations, means that accumulated risks can easily tip into crisis. This risk is multiplied if additional pressure comes from a sudden population influx or disaster.

However, if the humanitarian sector is well prepared to respond in urban settings, and local actors are more aware of the potential offered by collaborative approaches with the humanitarian sector, this opens the door for more effective humanitarian response.

At the same time, city authorities themselves are confronted with challenges posed by crises, such as a sudden population influx. This includes the burden imposed on already-limited resources and infrastructure, potential social tensions between host and displaced communities, and the possibility of displacement crisis becoming protracted. In a disaster setting, the challenge becomes how to ensure services become operational again, and repairing damaged shelter and infrastructure, in a context where there may have been pre-existing deficiencies.

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All cities and urban centres are different; they are also complex in terms of the diversity of the roles and responsibilities of various local actors. There is no such thing as a standard approach to a humanitarian response in an urban setting – understanding the local context and adapting to it is fundamental.

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Three kinds of humanitarian response, in particular, are most suited to the complexity and variety of urban contexts.

1. Approaches which build on local capacities, systems and structure can help to empower and strengthen them
2. Cash-based or market-based responses are effective in an urban setting where there are more livelihood opportunities, active markets and existing supply chains, and
3. Humanitarian interventions that take an area-based approach, focusing on meeting all the needs within a geographical area, rather than sectoral approaches dealing only with health or education, for example, can be effective in a dense urban setting.