What happens when migrants, refugees and internally displaced people arrive in small and intermediary cities, rather than major metropolitan areas, where resources are limited and infrastructure is not prepared for climate change and other disasters?

Small and intermediary cities are absorbing a large share of people on the move, often without the resources or institutional capacity to respond.

A new publication –  ARRIVE – commissioned by GIZ and authored by UNU-EHS, examines how secondary cities and development cooperation can better respond to these challenges, and offers concrete, place-based recommendations for building inclusive, resilient communities that benefit both mobile populations and long-term residents.

Drawing on research in seven cities across Colombia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, the study uses an “iceberg” framework. It looks past visible outcomes such as informal settlements and flooding to the underlying practices, capacities and paradigms that produce them.