Freetown

Exploring a city-wide learning platform in planning equitable urban development

city project

In Freetown, SLURC and its community partners are establishing a city-wide and a number of Community Learning Platforms to explore the role of participatory learning in planning equitable urban developments in Freetown. We are facilitating this through participative action research, bringing together an Urban Learning Alliance composed of SLURC, local and international universities, municipal authorities, central government, communities living in informal settlements and their organisations, and NGOs.

The team aims to undertake settlement profiles with the purpose of uncovering the diverse needs and aspirations of residents within the informal settlements of Freetown.

We hope to enhance the capacity of urban stakeholders and actors in developing and undertaking informal settlement profiling, drawing on participatory spatial methodologies with the aid of our ASF partners.

Finally, we are aiming to scale up settlement knowledge to develop a city-wide understanding of urban development processes grounded through the learning platforms – the City Learning Platform and the Community Learning Platforms – whose constitution recognises social diversity, power relations and inclusive development, to support claims for urban equality for informal settlements in Freetown.

FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE

SLURC

Freetown

SIERRA LEONE city exhibition
Delivering transformative research and capacity for equality

Tuesday 01 February 2022

Showcasing 4 years of capacity building and co-production across three informal settlements in Freetown, to enhance the City Learning Platforms through change by design.

On 1st February 2022, the Freetown City Exhibition celebrated four years of SLURC working together with informal communities in Freetown, as part of the KNOW.

The exhibition and programme brought together various urban stakeholders from MDAs, the Freetown City Council, councilors, I/NGOs, Academia and community members including members of the Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (FEDURP) and chiefs from the informal settlements where the research was undertaken to discuss the impact and legacy of the project and the pathways it has brought to light towards a more equal Freetown.

Notably, the event was an opportunity to highlight participatory planning and design, in particular the role of Community Action Area Plans (CAAP) and City and Community Learning Platforms in research, policy and practice, both playing an important role in the ongoing implementation of the Transform Freetown Plan led by the Freetown City Council (FCC).

Exhibition makes Calabash front page news! 02 February 2022

Blog post from Premiere Media Group

Photos from the workshop

Margarette Dauda from UNDP & Beatrice de Carli from ASF-UK speaking at the hybrid seminar

These seminars formed part of the KNOW final conference

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Presentations

The ‘slow anatomy of change’: Urban knowledge trajectories towards an inclusive settlement upgrading agenda in Freetown

Dr Joseph Macarthy (Sierra Leone Research Centre - SLURC), Braima Koroma (SLURC), Dr Stephanie Butcher (Melbourne Centre for Cities, The University of Melbourne), Dr Camila Cociña (DPU, UCL), and Dr Alexandre Apsan Frediani (IIED)

Watch now

Co-producing integrative risk governance in rapidly growing urban Africa: lessons from informal settlements in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Dr Emmanuel Osuteye (DPU, UCL), Prof Cassidy Johnson (DPU, UCL), Braima Koroma and Dr Joseph Macarthy (SLURC)

Watch now