Think & adapt

Fresh ideas, transformative project examples, and inspiring insights from experts.

Insights

Ten booklets featuring conversations with leading global South experts on reframing how we imagine and rebuild a global system in desperate need of reform. Practitioners, activists, academics, and policymakers share hard-won insights from years of successful, grounded work.

Featured insights

Tolullah Oni

Urban epidemiologist
We’re drawn to and focus on the individual, but population-level interventions are almost always more effective.

Susan Parnell

Geographer
Our job as scholars is to illuminate complexity, not to construct complexity.

Rob Muggah

Security expert
In cities like Acapulco, Bogotá, Chicago, Johannesburg, and Karachi, roughly 90% of all homicides are clustered in less than 5% of street addresses

Edgar Pieterse

Urbanist
Until the early 2000s, local government was infantilised in most of sub-saharan Africa. it still is in many countries.

Geci Karuri Sebina

Futurist
We need to resist this polarising idea that as soon as you question western hegemony, it means that you are asking for another type of hegemony to take its place

Rahul Mehrothra

Urban designer
Planning has been as equally complicit as architecture in constantly failing to align with local cultures

Tatiana Thieme

Ethnographer
Unlike other parts of the world with ageing populations and workforces, youths in africa are the most vulnerable majority demographic

Edgar Pieterse

Urbanist
I don’t like the idea of “South”, because I mean, it’s not really “South”, is it? It’s really the periphery of capitalism

Vyjyanthi Rao

Urban anthropologist
Developers in Mumbai have the dubious distinction of being pioneers because they found a way to use the slums as a gateway to taking control of the most valuable portions of land across the city

Idris Jala

Technocrat
If people in the organisation do not embrace a new way of working, transformational leadership alone will not achieve the desired outcome

Insights

Featured insights

Tolullah Oni

Urban epidemiologist
We’re drawn to and focus on the individual, but population-level interventions are almost always more effective.

Susan Parnell

Geographer
Our job as scholars is to illuminate complexity, not to construct complexity.

Rob Muggah

Security expert
In cities like Acapulco, Bogotá, Chicago, Johannesburg, and Karachi, roughly 90% of all homicides are clustered in less than 5% of street addresses

Edgar Pieterse

Urbanist
Until the early 2000s, local government was infantilised in most of sub-saharan Africa. it still is in many countries.

Geci Karuri Sebina

Futurist
We need to resist this polarising idea that as soon as you question western hegemony, it means that you are asking for another type of hegemony to take its place

Rahul Mehrothra

Urban designer
Planning has been as equally complicit as architecture in constantly failing to align with local cultures

Tatiana Thieme

Ethnographer
Unlike other parts of the world with ageing populations and workforces, youths in africa are the most vulnerable majority demographic

Edgar Pieterse

Urbanist
I don’t like the idea of “South”, because I mean, it’s not really “South”, is it? It’s really the periphery of capitalism

Vyjyanthi Rao

Idris Jala

Technocrat
If people in the organisation do not embrace a new way of working, transformational leadership alone will not achieve the desired outcome

Tactics

Trace the evolution of tactics used by advocates for equality and sustainable change. Three components—an Atlas, Timeline, and Catalogue—offer a unique lens for adapting and implementing strategies that actually push for reform.

Featured tactics

An Atlas of Tactics

An Incomplete Catalogue of Tactics

A Timeline of Evolving Tactics

Tactics

Featured tactics

An Atlas of Tactics

An Incomplete Catalogue of Tactics

A Timeline of Evolving Tactics