Urbanization and Sustainable Cities
The last 50 years have seen a fourfold increase in Peru’s urban population, a process that has added 20 million people to its cities. This accelerated urban expansion has occurred mainly through the informal, unplanned occupation of the territory—which has generated cities where vast areas do not have adequate access to basic services, public spaces, urban infrastructure, and economic opportunities in general.
GRADE’s urban development research agenda seeks to help reduce the exclusion and inefficiency associated with such disorderly growth, and to prevent such expansion patterns from continuing to reproduce indefinitely. For this, GRADE has focused its efforts on the development and adaptation of accessible and low-cost technological tools that, on the one hand, facilitate the detailed and systematic analysis of urban problems, and on the other, help the relevant public and private stakeholders to improve the governance of cities—especially in their expansion areas.
The tools and analysis developed by GRADE can be adapted and applied in the rest of the Global South, where urbanization processes are replicating several of the patterns already observed in Peru. For this reason, GRADE seeks to promote cooperation channels that would allow the efficient and direct transfer of experiences and knowledge in the South-South axis.
Senior Researchers
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Ricardo Fort Meyer
PhD en Economic Development - Wageningen University
Ricardo Fort is an economist with a Master in Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in Economic Development from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He currently works as a Senior Researcher at the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE), where he works on projects related to the economic development of […]
Adjunct Researchers
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Álvaro Espinoza Benza
Master en Political Science - New School of Social Research
Álvaro graduated in Economics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from the New School of Social Research in New York. He is an Adjunct Researcher at GRADE. His work has focused on public management, institutional economics and urban development. Álvaro has a broad experience as a […]
Publications
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El impacto de la pandemia en el sistema de distribución de alimentos del Perú: los mercados de abastos minoristas
2022 Álvaro Espinoza, Ricardo Fort, Mauricio Espinoza
Durante el año 2020, la emergencia sanitaria del COVID-19 puso a prueba la efectividad y la capacidad de resiliencia del sistema de distribución de alimentos del Perú, en particular, en su pieza más importante: los mercados de abastos tradicionales, donde se concentra más de la mitad del gasto de los hogares en alimentos. El shock […]
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Reorganizar el Perú: ciudades intermedias y desarrollo
El Perú pendiente: ensayos para un desarrollo con bienestar2022 Álvaro Espinoza, Ricardo Fort, Mauricio Espinoza
Este ensayo aborda la discusión del “centralismo limeño” y el enorme desequilibrio de recursos y oportunidades entre la capital y el resto de las ciudades del país. La falta de planificación territorial y de políticas específicas que promuevan el potencial de cada región genera desigualdades e ineficiencias en el modelo de crecimiento actual y, por […]
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El Perú pendiente: ensayos para un desarrollo con bienestar
2022 Maria Balarin, Santiago Cueto, Ricardo Fort
Los ensayos que conforman este libro han sido escritos a modo de conmemoración por los primeros 40 años de vida institucional de GRADE, que coinciden no solo con el Bicentenario de la Independencia del Perú, sino también con la crisis sanitaria por la pandemia del COVID-19 y sus profundas secuelas económicas, sociales y políticas. Desde […]
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Embedding Community Voice into Smart City Spatial Planning
2022 Jaideep Gupte, Louise Clark, Debjani Ghosh, Sarath Babu, Priyanka Mehra, Asif Raza, Vaibhav Sharma, Yogesh Kumar, Alpana Mishra, Kabir Shrivastava, Pranjal Kulkarni, Ricardo Fort, Álvaro Espinoza, Adrián Chuquipiondo, Jeetendra Rathore, Divya Pillai
Public participation in spatial planning is a vital means to successful policymaking and can be enhanced by combining geospatial methods with participatory learning and action. Based on a pilot study in Bhopal, India involving urban authorities, civil society organisations and experts in an informal settlement during Covid-19 lockdowns, the authors find that the obstacles to […]
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Hacia una nueva política de vivienda en el Perú: problemas y posibilidades
2020 Ricardo Fort, Álvaro Espinoza
En las siguientes páginas se describe el problema general de la producción de vivienda en el Perú, y se plantean, de manera muy concreta y sucinta, varias posibles medidas de política que pueden ayudar a incrementar substantivamente la producción de vivienda—especialmente vivienda de interés social (VIS)—en el corto y mediano plazo.
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Mapeo y tipología de la expansión urbana en el Perú
2020
Este documento resume los principales hallazgos de un estudio encargado por la Asociación de Desarrolladores Inmobiliarios (ADI) y ejecutado por el Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE) durante el año 2019, cuyo objetivo es cuantificar y comprender la dinámica interna del crecimiento urbano del Perú en las últimas dos décadas. El ámbito del estudio […]
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The impact of social ties and third-party enforcement on collective action and growth: micro evidence from Peru
2019
Exploiting a unique empirical setting, 1,000 vendors in 90 traditional food markets in Lima, researchers document that historic social ties among market founders are associated, decades later, with stricter formal (third party) enforcement of market rules, more collective action, and the greater resilience of market sales to the entry of modern supermarkets. Markets with stronger […]
No se han encontrado publicaciones de Urbanization and Sustainable Cities en la categoría Journal
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Reorganizar el Perú: ciudades intermedias y desarrollo
El Perú pendiente: ensayos para un desarrollo con bienestar2022
Este ensayo aborda la discusión del “centralismo limeño” y el enorme desequilibrio de recursos y oportunidades entre la capital y el resto de las ciudades del país. La falta de planificación territorial y de políticas específicas que promuevan el potencial de cada región genera desigualdades e ineficiencias en el modelo de crecimiento actual y, por […]
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Drone photography improves understanding of spaces for children in Lima
Early Childhood MattersThe objective is to provide local and central governments with tools that will enable them to monitor and improve public spaces. These tools include indicators – such as the quality of the environment, ease of access for pedestrians, and level of use by families – and instruments for assessing them, such as checklists and drone […]
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Embedding Community Voice into Smart City Spatial Planning
2022
Public participation in spatial planning is a vital means to successful policymaking and can be enhanced by combining geospatial methods with participatory learning and action. Based on a pilot study in Bhopal, India involving urban authorities, civil society organisations and experts in an informal settlement during Covid-19 lockdowns, the authors find that the obstacles to […]
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Planning informality: Promoting a market of planned informal settlements
2018
About 30% of the population in developing countries live in informal urban settlements lacking adequate basic services, public spaces and urban equipment. The origin to most of these shortcomings can be traced to a single feature: the urban layout design.
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Planificar la informalidad: herramientas para el desarrollo de mercados de “urbanizaciones informales planificadas”
2018
Alrededor de un tercio de la población peruana —más de 10 millones de personas— viven en asentamientos urbanos marginales ocupados generalmente de manera informal. Según el Ministerio de Vivienda, estos asentamientos no tienen un diseño adecuado de la trama urbana y se caracterizan por carecer, total o parcialmente, de servicios básicos, espacios públicos y equipamiento […]
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Mejor inversión pública para evitar más desastres: brechas y prioridades de infraestructura en los barrios vulnerables de Lima
2017
Documento de política que brinda aportes para el diseño e implementación de planes de infraestructura con enfoque territorial a través del análisis de las brechas y prioridades de infraestructura y calidad de la inversión pública de tres barrios urbanos vulnerables de Lima.
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El Perú pendiente: ensayos para un desarrollo con bienestar
2022
Los ensayos que conforman este libro han sido escritos a modo de conmemoración por los primeros 40 años de vida institucional de GRADE, que coinciden no solo con el Bicentenario de la Independencia del Perú, sino también con la crisis sanitaria por la pandemia del COVID-19 y sus profundas secuelas económicas, sociales y políticas. Desde […]
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Inversión sin planificación. La calidad de la inversión pública en los barrios vulnerables de Lima
2017
La mitad de la población urbana del Perú vive en barrios urbanos vulnerables (BUV) ocupados informalmente, expuestos a múltiples riesgos, y deficitarios en servicios básicos e infraestructura. Este libro busca medir la calidad de la inversión pública en BUV mediante tres ejercicios analíticos. En primer lugar, caracteriza los tipos de espacios urbanos en el país […]
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Otro urbanismo para Lima: más allá del mejoramiento de barrios
2017
Conjunto de artículos que analizan, desde varios puntos de vista y disciplinas, los distintos aspectos involucrados en el desarrollo del área de proyectos urbano integrales del programa metropolitano Barrio Mío. Su principal aporte es mostrar y analizar el enfoque y la metodología concreta y completa con la que se abordó —y se podría abordar— el urbanismo en […]
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Hacia una nueva política de vivienda en el Perú: problemas y posibilidades
2020
En las siguientes páginas se describe el problema general de la producción de vivienda en el Perú, y se plantean, de manera muy concreta y sucinta, varias posibles medidas de política que pueden ayudar a incrementar substantivamente la producción de vivienda—especialmente vivienda de interés social (VIS)—en el corto y mediano plazo.
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Communities and Spontaneous Urban Planning: A Toolkit for Urban Expansion. Project Summary
2018
Most urbanization processes around developing countries are happening either by rural-urban migration, as it happened in Lima 25 years ago, or by high paced vegetative population growth among second and third-generation migrants, as it is happening now in Lima—and either form exerts pressure on relatively weak public institutions. State-sponsored urban planning is often absent, so […]
Projects
- Capacity Building for Smart Data and Inclusive Cities in IndiaApril 2021
- Study for the improvement of tax collection in the Provincial Municipality of Huancayo through the Preparation of a Fiscal Cadastre Linked to the Municipal Tax Collection SystemOctober 2020
- Characterization and quantification of recent urbanization and housing construction processes in PeruDecember 2018
- Pilot study for the validation of public space indicatorsApril 2018
- Improving municipal tax collection through new technologiesMarch 2018
- Typology of provincial and district municipalities of PeruNovember 2017
- Institutions and competitiveness: the case of Lima’s supply marketsOctober 2017
- Governance and productivity in food markets in LimaSeptember 2016
- The processes of spontaneous urbanization in the absence of the StateMarch 2016
- The governance and productivity of the wholesale markets in Lima: a pilot studyOctober 2015
News
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“Urban expansion should have been planned since the project began to be considered”. Alvaro Espinoza’s opinion on Chancay’s mega-port
April 9, 2024 Urbanization and sustainable cities
“For them to start worrying about how the city is going to expand at this point is untimely. Urban expansion should have been planned since the project began to be considered”. Alvaro Espinoza, adjunct researcher at GRADE, writes in El Comercio about the housing demands due to the construction of the Chancay mega-port.
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Espinoza and Fort’s study on urban expansion of the last 20 years in Peru is quoted in Somos Periodismo PUCP
August 24, 2023 Urbanization and sustainable cities
“For those with scarce resources, the option is to invade a plot of land or buy it in the illegal market. According to a study conducted by GRADE, 93% of the country’s urban expansion is developed informally”. Somos Periodismo PUCP quoted the study by our researchers Alvaro Espinoza and Ricardo Fort on the internal dynamics […]
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Alvaro Espinoza: “What most modern cities are trying to do is to have more integrated cities”
June 27, 2023 Urbanization and sustainable cities
“What most modern cities are trying to do is to have more integrated cities, where you have people from different socioeconomic sectors and walks of life living in a more mixed way. That makes the city more efficient and people are closer to where they study and where they work.” Our Adjunct Researcher Alvaro Espinoza […]
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Migraciones in pandemic. GRADE Conversa 17 featuring Mauricio Espinoza.
February 22, 2023 Poverty and equality, Natural resources, extractive industries and social conflict, Urbanization and sustainable cities
Peru has been one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic in the world. Due to the health crisis, in March 2020 the government established a compulsory confinement that caused the paralysis of several economic sectors and a historic increase in the unemployment rate. Despite the vouchers provided, households that depended on the informal […]
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Ricardo Fort in El Comercio: “You are fulfilling an expectation that land traffickers take advantage of”
August 3, 2022 Urbanization and sustainable cities
“Every ten, fifteen years, sometimes five years, from the Congress of the Republic a law is approved that gives the State the possibility of formalizing informally occupied property. You are fulfilling an expectation that land traffickers take advantage of.” Our senior researcher Ricardo Fort shared his opinion in a recent episode of El Comercio’s #PasaEnLaCalle […]
Events
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GRADE on live, Publication Presentation, Webinar
GRADE 40 years | Book Launch “El Perú pendiente: ensayos para un desarrollo con bienestar”
01/09/2022 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm Zoom de GRADE Rural development and agriculture, Education and learning, Employment, productivity and innovation, Ethnicity, gender and citizenship, Methodologies for research and evaluation of policy and programmes, Poverty and equality, Natural resources, extractive industries and social conflict, State reform and public institutions, Health and nutrition, Urbanization and sustainable cities
El Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE) organizes the launch of the book “El Perú pendiente: ensayos para un desarrollo con bienestar” (The Pending Peru: essays for a development with well-being), as part of the commemorative celebration for its forty years of institutional life. The book is a collection of essays that, from different conceptual and […]
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Alvaro Espinoza and Ricardo Fort were speakers at the Macro Regional Seminar “Sustainable Cities” of the Ministry of Housing
29/04/2022 9:00 am Youtube del Ministerio de Vivienda Urbanization and sustainable cities
“In general, the municipalities must be strengthened, but the problem of informal expansion is deeper. Households have no alternative. What are they going to do if they do not occupy a territory informally? There is no social housing offer that these households can access. […] It is not a question of putting a lot of […]
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Ricardo Fort joined a COVID-19 Responses for Equity CORE Initiative international panel
23/06/2021 8:00 am Zoom CORE Initiative Ethnicity, gender and citizenship, Urbanization and sustainable cities
Our Senior Researcher Ricardo Fort joined an IDRC and IDS COVID-19 Responses for Equity (CORE) Initiative international discussion. GRADE is member of the CORE initative. The event explored learnings from approaches to identifying, assessing, and pursuing opportunities to influence policy decisions and changes in practice. Co-hosted by Southern Voice and IDS, saught to enhance efforts to inform […]
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Alvaro Espinoza joined the Ombudsman’s Office meeting, on the situation of wholesale food markets during the health emergency due to COVID-19
06/05/2021 11:00 am - 1:00 pm Facebook de la Defensoría del Pueblo Urbanization and sustainable cities
“Sanitary measures are necessary, but the markets within four walls have had to make extraordinary expenses to comply with the rules, slow down the flow of customers, and so on. However, outside there are a huge number of street vendors that are not regulated. There the problem is that the State applies a series of […]
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Mauricio Espinoza was a speaker at the Lima Geographical Society conference on disaster risk, prevention and health in times of COVID-19
13/10/2020 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm Evento virtual Urbanization and sustainable cities
Why did the food markets become the transmission sources of COVID-19? What is the situation and importance of the markets in Peru? What measures were carried out to prevent and contain the infections? Watch the presentation by Mauricio Espinoza, adjunct researcher at GRADE, at the Lima Geographical Society XXVIII Conference on disaster risk, prevention and health […]
- Education and Learning
- Employment, Productivity and Innovation
- Rural Development and Agriculture
- Ethnicity, Gender and Citizenship
- Methodologies for Research and Evaluation of Policy and Programmes
- Poverty and Equity
- Natural Resources, Extractive Industries and Social Conflict
- State Reform and Public Institutions
- Health and Nutrition
- Urbanization and Sustainable Cities