Addressing the audience

We live in an era of unprecedented human mobility. There are today at least 1 billion migrants in the world, and many more people move on smaller distances and for shorter periods. These movements have distinct consequences on the circulation of ideas, technology and wealth, and drive cultural, social and economic change in communities and societies all around the world.

Whether internal or international, forced or voluntary, temporary or permanent, population flows are increasingly directed towards urban areas. Through these movements, urban and non-urban places are interconnected in trans-local networks that redefine global patterns of opportunities and risks. Today’s world cannot be understood without looking at cities, and today’s cities cannot be understood without looking at human mobility patterns.

For most people who move into cities and towns, urban life translates into improved well-being and better overall prospects. Population inflow, on the other hand, makes cities and towns more diverse, vital and vibrant places hosting a wealth of physical and intellectual resources that underpin innovation, economic growth and cultural change, and that can be mobilized to better anticipate and cope with shocks and crises, including disasters.

However, population inflows, and the social heterogeneity they induce, can challenge the capacity of local institutions, markets and actors to provide adequate access to services and opportunities to all urban dwellers. Unmanaged urban mobility can result into situations of informality and vulnerability, with negative effects both on incoming people, who often face specific patterns of exclusion and may end up amongst the most marginalized and worst affected in disasters, and on host communities, whose access to essential resources can be affected by additional demographic pressures.

In order to successfully include migrants, displaced persons and refugees in the fabric of today’s cities, coordination and partnerships among a variety of actors are needed. Good national, regional and global migration governance can remove the barriers people encounter when accessing essential resources and opportunities in urban areas of destination. Well-informed and forward-looking local-level development planning can identify and anticipate needs and opportunities stemming from urban-bound population flows and create the preconditions for them not to result into increased vulnerability. The international community can contribute by facilitating dialogue and transfer of knowledge and practices that support more effective local action. Efforts from the private sector, civil society actors, as well as the people on the move themselves, are key to promoting progress from the bottom up.

In order to enhance their resilience, increasingly diverse cities in an increasingly mobile world cannot rescind from promoting the well-being of their non-native citizens, and from fully leveraging their development and risk reduction potential.