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UCL Centre for Languages & International Education (CLIE)

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The UCL International Pre-Master's is a preparation course for international students who are aiming to study for a postgraduate degree at UCL or elsewhere in the UK. The International Pre-Master's is a stimulating and rigorous course which provides you with the levels of English language and academic skills required to succeed at graduate level.

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Targeting and Universalismin Poverty Reduction 

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Targeting and Universalismin Poverty Reduction 

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Sarah A. Radcliffe

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Development Alternatives - Radcliffe - 2015 - Development and Change - Wiley Online Library

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Development alternatives arguably emerge out of practices, negotiations and critiques of dominant development narratives and paradigms. Critical Development Studies' (CDS) practices of insightful critique and a willingness to challenge hegemonic paradigms are alive and well. Yet this article argues that CDS could fruitfully pay attention to emergent issues that have yet to receive sustained analysis and critique.

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UK Council for International Student Affairs

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UK Council for International Student Affairs

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UKCISA - international student advice and guidance - Studying in the UK?

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UK Council for International Student Affairs. Advice for international students in the UK and universities, colleges and students' unions who support them

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Professor of Urban Policy and International Development

Head of Department

Development Planning Unit

Faculty of the Built Environment

Joined UCL

15th Oct 1990

Research summary

My research focuses on the role of city governments in progressive social and political transformation; governance dimensions of urban and peri-urban infrastructure (transport, water & sanitation); planning and urban informality; and linkages between rapid urbanisation and health. Recent and current projects include: inter-disciplinary research on urban zoonotic diseases, Nairobi; social impacts of transport investments in Barranquilla, Colombia; and equity dimensions of public bicycles in Latin American cities. Other recent research: ESRC-DFID-funded project on mobility, poverty reduction, social inclusion and urban integration in Medellin, Colombia; co-authored Lancet article on urban health.

See complete list of publications under 'Publications'. My books include:

Dávila, J D (editor), 2013, Urban Mobility and Poverty: Lessons from Medellin and Soacha, Colombia, Development Planning Unit, UCL and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 214 pages.

Allen, A, J D Dávila, and P Hofmann, 2006, Governance of water and sanitation for the peri-urban poor: A framework for understanding and action in metropolitan regions, Development Planning Unit, UCL, 124 pages.

Brook, R and J D Dávila (editors), 2000, The Peri-urban Interface: A Tale of Two Cities, School of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, University of Bangor, and Development Planning Unit, UCL, 251 pages.

Dávila, J D, 2000, Planificación y política en Bogotá: La vida de Jorge Gaitán Cortés (Planning and politics in Bogotá: A biography of Jorge Gaitán Cortés), Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá, 230 pages.

Selected other publications:

Dávila, J D, 2014, "Urban fragmentation, 'good governance' and the emergence of the competitive city", in S. Parnell, S. and S, Oldfield (eds.) The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South, Routledge, London, pp. 474-486.

Dávila, J D, 2009, "Being a mayor: Four views from Colombia", Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 20, No. 1, April 2009, pp. 37-57.

Dávila, J D et al., 2006, Housing and Land for the Urban Poor. Case Studies of Bogotá-Soacha and Medellín, report for World Bank-Cities Alliance and Colombian Government (in Spanish)

Teaching summary

Julio currently runs the Doctoral Seminar series for first-year MPhil/PhD students at the DPU and teaches in the following UCL Master's modules:

DPU: 'Industrialisation and infrastructure'

UCL Institute for Global Health: 'Urban health'

Bartlett School of Planning: 'International case studies in transport planning'

Education

University of London

PhD, Planning studies | 1998

University College London

MSc, Urban Planning | 1984

University College London

P.Grad Dip, | 1983

Universidad de los Andes

BSc Hons, Civil Engineering | 1981

Biography

Julio D Dávila is Professor of Urban Policy and International Development, and Director of the Development Planning Unit, UCL.

A civil engineer and urban development planner with over 25 years' international experience in research and consultancy projects in 15 countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Prof. Dávila's research focuses on the role of local government in progressive social and political transformation in developing countries; the governance dimensions of urban and peri-urban infrastructure (transport, and water & sanitation); the intersection between planning and urban informality; and linkages between rapid urbanisation and health.

Prof. Dávila has taught at the London School of Economics and the University of Cape Town, has lectured in several universities around the world, and has been a PhD examiner in several countries. He has had an advisory role in a number of institutions, including Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Medellín campus), Children Change Colombia (a UK-based charity) and the British Academy. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK).

Prior to UCL, he was a research fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London and Buenos Aires, under the leadership of the late Argentinian urbanist and historian, Dr Jorge E Hardoy. In 1988 at IIED he co-founded the journal Environment and Urbanization, currently published by Sage, and one of the most influential and widely quoted international journals in the urban field.

As a young graduate civil engineer in his native Colombia, he worked as a planner and researcher at the National Planning Agency (Departamento Nacional de Planeación), where he contributed his knowledge on self-help housing in Bogotá to the country's first National Housing Plan.

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Joined UCL 15th Oct 1990 My research focuses on the role of city governments in progressive social and political transformation; governance dimensions of urban and peri-urban infrastructure (transport, water & sanitation); planning and urban informality; and linkages between rapid urbanisation and health.

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Information to help international students settle in and adjust to university life in the UK, covering topics such as opening a bank account, healthcare, police registration and the International Student Orientation Programme (ISOP).

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How does DFID work with non-state power holders in conflict zones?

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How does DFID work with non-state power holders in conflict zones?

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LSE

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How does DFID work with non-state power holders in conflict zones?

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Professor in Practice, Duncan Green, interviews DFID's Wilf Mwamba about how donors understand and work with non-state power holders, like armed groups, faith organisations and traditional chiefs, ...

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World Bank

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Data for Low & middle income, Colombia | Data

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Data for Low & middle income, Colombia from The World Bank: Data

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Escaping the Fragility Trap? Why is it so hard to think constructively about fragile states?

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Escaping the Fragility Trap? Why is it so hard to think constructively about fragile states?

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Duncan Green

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Just been reading the report of the 'Commission on Fragility, Growth and Development'. Hosted by LSE and Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government; big name chairs ( David Cameron, Donald Kaberuka and the LSE's Adnan Khan). And I think it's a bit disappointing. But the reasons for that are actually quite interesting and instructive.

First the positives. Above all, the report's recognition and ambition: recognition that fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS) are the hardest nut to crack in development, and require all the brainpower and resources possible. Ambition, in that it reckons the nut can indeed by cracked.

It has some good overall instincts, setting out in the foreword that 'what works' in FCAS is 'Realism, not idealism; Local, not international priorities; Reconciliation first, not elections first and Working with governments not around governments and Institution building and nation building.' Paul Collier's influence shows in its sensible reminder that forcing countries emerging from conflict to run early elections can do more harm than good.

They do the traditional take-down of previous attempts to fix FCAS from outside, arguing that 'received wisdom has accumulated via three different processes: quick reactions to the crises inherent to fragility; imagining that fragility has a single root cause that can be addressed by international intervention or domestic resolution; and inferring strategy for the escape from fragility from the current characteristics of Western democracies.'

So good instincts and diagnosis, although there is a tendency to set up (and knock down) straw men rather than acknowledge current debates and shifts in donor thinking - other reviewers have found little new in the report. In fact, there is a lot of rethinking going on - the kind of things I discussed last year in a paper on donor theories of change in FCAS.

The report gets in a tangle over the role of the state: 'Only governments can lift societies out of fragility', it declares and sets out recommendations for 'viable strategies for national leaders wishing to begin the escape from fragility'. But what if the government is either absent, or predatory? In time honoured policy wonk fashion, it appears to be assuming a can opener - in this case a government that is willing and to some extent able to fix things, and which needs some help from outside. Which then allows them to set forth some sensible recommendations for that government, both on political reform and economic policy.

Here are the headline recommendations: when you're reading them, ask yourselves, 'what are the chances of this working in Syria, Yemen, Somalia or South Sudan?'

For International Actors:

Help build government that is subject to checks and balances and works for common purpose

Help build domestic security, including through a phase of international and regional security

Capitalise on pivotal moments

Focus on economic governance, not policies

Use aid to support private investment for job creation

Adopt distinctive international financial institution (IFI) policies for fragile states

Use international means of building resilience

For Domestic Actors:

Establish limited and purposive long-term goals

In the short-term, look for quick wins

Build institutions to support the private economy

Invest in urban infrastructure for energy and connectivity

Use domestic means of building resilience

The Commission was hosted at LSE's International Growth Centre, but no-one from the International Development department (where I work) was involved, and I think it shows: the literature on the politics and political economy of FCAS is strikingly absent: no mentions of some of its leading current thinkers, as featured regularly on this blog: Sue Unsworth, David Booth, Brian Levy or Matt Andrews. Even within the LSE, no mention of some of the relevant big name profs - James Putzel, Mary Kaldor, Alex de Waal or David Keen, all of whom have written extensively on crisis states and conflict. Nor of the work of two highly relevant research initiatives - the Crisis States Research Network and CPAID (where I do a day a week).The report also fails to acknowledge all the practical experience accumulating within PDIA, Doing Development Differently or the Thinking and Working Politically communities.

Instead it looks for lessons from countries like Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia, which took off after magically acquiring a tin opener in the shape of a nation-building authoritarian government led by a Kagame or a Meles.

But what can outsiders (or domestic reformers) do, absent a providential, well intentioned and powerful leader? That for me is the most interesting, and urgent question, and I think if they had asked more of the researchers named above, they might have got more interesting answers. Options include:

1. Nothing. Accept that official aid donors in particular are helpless to work in contexts where their principal ally, the state, is not onside. When a Meles or Kagame appears, drop everything and rush to both help them transform the economy, and try to nudge them away from authoritarianism (not easy, I realize).

2. Hybrid institutions/Working with the Grain. Invest in understanding the institutions, both formal and informal, that exist in a given context, and find solutions that involve and strengthen them. See ODI's great work on educational reforms in West Africa for more on that, or Brian Levy's Working with the Grain.

3. Pockets of Effectiveness: look beyond the presidential palace, to identify ministries, municipalities, bits of the judiciary or other fragments of the state that are still functioning and could be viable partners.

4. Look beyond the state altogether: tricky for official donors, but there is a whole world of 'public authority' held by non-state actors like traditional chiefs, faith leaders, civil society organizations or private sector bodies, that can be brought together to trigger processes of social and economic change.

Any other suggestions?

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Escaping the Fragility Trap? Why is it so hard to think constructively about fragile states? - From Poverty to Power

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Just been reading the report of the 'Commission on Fragility, Growth and Development'. Hosted by LSE and Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government; big name chairs ( David Cameron, Donald Kaberuka and the LSE's Adnan Khan). And I think it's a bit disappointing. But the reasons for that are actually quite interesting and instructive.