Paper short abstract:

This paper highlights the potential role of research in key decision making for communities, local municipalities, and other organisations. The pathways for implementing research done in academia will be discussed for the purpose of slum upgrading and urban development with a focus on Latin America.

Paper long abstract:

Academic research, driven by the impetus of finding sustainable solutions and to slow down the climate change impact is often overlooked due to various reasons. Missing awareness of its existence, in due to journal publication access restrictions, and the technical language of reports, form a barrier to non-academics. In order to harness the potential of research to inform and challenge misconceptions through facts, it is necessary to open up new communication pathways. Some of these communication channels already exist, yet are not broadly known, and new channels need to be developed.

Here we review the conventional communication channels and data processing techniques applied for the purpose of slum upgrading and urban development. The decision making process at different levels of an affected community is studied for cases from urban and peri-urban communities based in Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia. Based on these findings a generalised model on how research is currently implemented is formed and reviewed for the purpose of improvement and highlight new opportunities.

Our findings also show that research on slum upgrading and urban development would benefit from an open exchange with the affected communities beyond individual case studies to remain relevant to the urban challenges of today. We review the benefits and challenges of partnerships with implementers from local and national governmental as well as non-governmental organisations. To conclude, a formalised communication platform is recommended to enable research exchange in a sustainable fashion and a request sent to the global community on how this could be accomplished.