PERIPERI (PARTNERS ENHANCING Resilience for People Exposed to Risk) is a network of those involved in both development and disaster reduction policy and practice. It aims to profile wide-ranging opportunities to build resilience to natural and other threats. Periperi advocates for disaster risk reduction as one strategy for achieving sustainable development.

The book is a welcome contribution to urban environmental literature for a number of reasons. First, it gives a sense of the dimensions of vulnerability in the South African region. Second, it draws together southern African authors involved in projects, to reflect their experiences themselves. Third, it highlights new methodological approaches to assessing risk. It also outlines the scope of the Periperi network’s activities. For those who wish to reduce vulnerability and improve the quality and security of urban life, especially for the poor, this is a most useful collection that contributes to our learning.

This publication is divided into three parts. Part I, Chapter 1, presents a conceptual framework for understanding vulnerability. The framework proposes a tension between vulnerability and resilience as measures of relative well-being in the face of changing urban environments. The urban context is described as the terrain that mediates the “bottom-up” negotiation of livelihood systems and the “top-down” dynamics of the macro-environment. Within it, urban governance is highlighted as a key mechanism through which the processes of mediation occur. The chapter provides a conceptual framework to assess and understand the case studies that follow in Part III of the book. It should, however, be regarded as an evolving framework that should be enriched by ongoing reformulation.
Chapter 2 discusses the relationship between urban vulnerability and disaster risk. Catherine Oelofse argues that urban risk and vulnerability need to be understood in terms of the nature of risk, the causal mechanisms that shape risk events and people’s responses to them, and the conditions that provide the context within which they occur. In order to achieve a more integrated and people-centred approach to risk management in urban environments, the dimensions of urban environmental risk will be further investigated.

Part II, Chapter 3, offers a brief overview of some of the urban challenges facing the five southern African countries from which the case studies are drawn, namely Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Here, various authors provide inputs that highlight themes and issues in these countries. All these countries have some common challenges in relation to the provision of basic infrastructure and services to increasingly populated urban sectors, such as severe resource constraints and often limited institutional capacity; some of authors draw attention to the crucial task of building stronger and more effective structures and processes as a basis for addressing these challenges.

Part III (three chapters) presents various case studies that illustrate strategies that increase the well-being of urban communities or households. All these have been described as “micro-strategies”, which operate on a relatively small scale and focus on a particular aspect of increased well-being. Chapter 4 provides an account of three interventions that help increase access to assets, services and opportunities in the urban context. These case studies are: the Ntwanano Project in Mozambique, the CSC-GTZ Urban Poverty Alleviation Project in Malawi and the Partnership for Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Project (PALS) based in Zambia.
Chapter 5 contains three case studies of projects that help increase the security of individuals and households in the urban environment. The case studies reflect on issues such as food security; a methodological way of tracking hazards, disaster incidents and impacts that could help towards proactive risk reduction planning; and public con