WELCOME PAGE

Hello and welcome to cbgurban! 

As you’ve landed on this page, allow me to introduce myself and these blog pages. 

Dhaka, Bangladesh
(Credit: C. Butcher-Gollach, September 2015)

My original formal education was as an urban and regional planner.  About six months into my first job (and not withstanding a heavy tertiary education debt load!) I realized that I wasn't cut out to be a ‘shopping center planner’.  Rather, my interests lie with those around me and how people - especially the urban poor and extremely poor, manage from day to day, with little option but to cope for themselves and their close ones.  I’m constantly inspired by the hard work, ingenuity and resilience of ordinary people everywhere who get up each day and never give up hope of a better life for themselves and their children. 

Education-wise, in addition to urban planning, I branched out into public administration and development management and recently, into learning basic geo-spatial analytical skills (I'm a self-confessed GIS-wannabe!)  I’m a firm believer in the power of education, urbanization and well-run institutions that provide opportunities and allow countries and people to move out of poverty.   I’ve worked in the public sector (at national, state and local government levels), private sector and academia and have lived and/or worked in around 30+ countries, most of them low income developing countries and small or vulnerable states.  

Moving house, South Tarawa, Kiribati
(Credit: C. Butcher-Gollach, July 2013)

My long term, ongoing personal interest has been where, why and how people - and especially lower income groups, access land (sometimes with and sometimes without infrastructure services), within reach of livelihoods to build their homes.  My professional interest is in how these individual decisions are affected by and should (but all too often don't) influence policy design and project implementation details, and, as the world becomes increasingly urbanized and our most rapidly growing major and mid-weight cities are expanding along coastlines, the impacts of extreme weather events on human settlements.  

We’re all constantly overloaded with super-interesting but never-ending e-mails, unsifted data and websites.  And so, I promise that my blogs will be intermittent not frequent, and I'll attempt to make them interesting enough that you may find yourself voluntarily wanting to read them from time to time.  If you want, you can click on the RSS feed button to receive a message when a new blog is posted.  I welcome your comments on the blogs and to hear of your own experiences and insights into the topics covered.  If there’s an urban topic that especially inspires you or you have your own related blog-post or article, please e-mail me.