Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of informal settlements to a tourism strategy and to city branding. It takes the case of Medellin, Colombia, which in recent years has developed several projects in theirbarriosusing a policy called: “social urbanism”.Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on a case study, that of “social urbanism” in Medellin, and the relationship with what is called slum tourism and city branding. After a brief theoretical exploration about informal settlements in Latin America, slum tourism and city branding; the paper presents the urban and social transformation of Medellin's dangerous and stigmatizedbarrioswith the “social urbanism” policy. Then the relationship between social urbanism, informal settlements and city branding is discussed.Findings: Medellin, perhaps without noticing or anticipating, has found a role for informal settlements in branding the city, and promoting tourism to those areas. With “social urbanism”, it is also helping to build an image of the city more authentic and distinguishable from other cities in Colombia and Latin America.Originality/value: The paper explores two themes that are considered nearly opposite: informal settlements and city branding. It discusses how a city in Colombia might have found a way to link them together with interesting results.

Nature-Based Solutions concepts and practices are being used worldwide as part of attempts to address societal challenges but have also been criticised for not dealing with deeper transformations needed to face urgent issues including biodiversity loss, climate change and inclusion. In this paper, we explore how an inclusive, integrated and long-sighted approach, emphasising a more radical integration of nature within cities, might support the transformations needed to endure major contemporary challenges. Addressing important emerging critiques of Nature-Based Solutions, we consider the potential of a more incisive form of Nature-Based Thinking (NBT) in cities, based on more holistic perspectives. The paper draws on a reflective and iterative research process that engaged both the research and practice communities through a symposium and a series of futures workshops that together explored the potential of NBT to develop future nature-cities relations in Europe and Latin America. The results of the reflective process suggest that notions of nature with people—not for people— new organisational structures, and the intention and capacity to apply long-term perspectives, are needed when planning for NBS interventions aimed at sustainable urban development. This includes developing a cultural-structural change based on new and inclusive understandings of human–nature relations, and novel governance paradigms that allow cross-sectoral coordination and engagement of local stakeholders beyond formal organisational structures.

The concept and application of nature-based solutions (NBS) have been rapidly progressing in Europe and Latin America, reflecting a transition in the way that urban governance is perceived. There is a large call for the collaborative, polycentric, and interdisciplinary governance of NBS. However, research on options for operationalising these governance processes in different contexts is still insufficient. This study explores and analyses the operationalisation of NBS adaptive governance in Europe and Latin America. Seven cities that are part of the project EU-H2020 CONEXUS have been selected as case studies: Barcelona, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Santiago de Chile, São Paulo, and Turin. This contribution aims to (i) understand how NBS governance processes are managed; (ii) identify the main positive and negative factors that influence NBS adaptive governance; and (iii) understand common factors and relationships that can hinder or drive forward adaptive governance for NBS in the investigated contexts. The results revealed common priorities indicating a shared pathway for Europe and Latin America; however, context-dependent specificities were also observed. These findings can be used to support cities in both European and American contexts in developing plans and actions for the more efficient enabling of NBS implementation and governance through adaptive governance.

Purpose: Placemaking is an established practice and research field. It takes on a spatial dimension created through a socio-political process where value and meaning are assigned to settings. An emerging concept, sustainability citizenship relies on social actors creating sustainable urban settings by working, sometimes, “outside” formal planning; offering an evolutionary step in the creation and understanding of community realised places. The purpose of this paper is twofold: examine one of Bogotá, Colombia’s informal settlements to explore the placemaking/sustainability citizenship relationship, and use this exploration as a means to argue the appropriateness of sustainability citizenship when investigating/realising settings in Bogotá’s informal settlements. Design/methodology/approach: To address the paper’s aim, books, journal articles and monographs related to citizen/community participation, placemaking, citizenship (in Latin America and conceptually) and sustainability citizenship were collected and critically reviewed. Identification of these documents was achieved through a literature review of the library database at Deakin University and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and the co-authors of this paper contributing to and reviewing submissions to the 2016 Routledge publication, Sustainability Citizenship. Field observation and engagement with the citizenry living in the informal settlements of Bogotá, Colombia were conducted at various times in 2013, 2014 and 2017. Findings: Sustainability citizenship and placemaking are linked through their “process-driven” approach to realising places and use of the citizenry to enact change. In Bogotá, Colombia’s informal settlement of Caracoli, public spaces are created outside formal planning processes through alternative path dependencies and the resourcefulness of its citizens. Sustainability citizenship, rather than placemaking, can work outside formal planning and manoeuvre around established path dependencies, which offers an evolutionary step in the creation and understanding of community realised places in the global south. Originality/value: This paper provides insight into the use of placemaking when explaining the realisation process of Bogotá, Colombia’s informal settlements. The paper’s contents also explore the placemaking/sustainability citizenship relationship, which in terms of the latter is a new citizenry dimension that can be used to provide new insight into the realisation process of public spaces in Bogotá’s informal settlements.

In (post-)conflict contexts, territorial struggles are strongly associated with the displacement of communities, whether rural–urban or intra-urban. Here, we argue for refocusing attention on territorialization processes as a means of understanding the dynamics and consequences of contestation between vulnerable minority communities and powerful groups. Focusing on the majority Afro-Colombian city of Buenaventura in the Pacific coastal region, which is simultaneously Colombia’s most significant port and one of its most neglected cities, we explore processes of de- and re-territorialization. Beyond tropes of displacement and resistance, territorialization offers a conceptual lens for understanding territorial struggles as complex events, in terms of the physical and symbolic effects of de-territorialization on communities and individuals, and re-territorialization as plural, disruptive practices of re-existence. This suggests the need to focus on everyday experiences as well as specific time- and space-bound moments of struggle. In this way, a territorialization approach permits a deeper understanding of the social production of territory with multiple elements relating to identity, symbolic practices and time–space dimensions.