By Vivian !Nou-/Gawaseb
The woman pointed to a narrow footpath behind the houses in Area 7, the largest informal settlement in Lüderitz, “Here we go home,” she said”. “This is where we feel most insecure.” Around her, a small group of neighbours nodded.
Others added their own markers to the large map spread out on the ground: a playground that is unsafe; a street where children refuse to walk alone. None of these risks were recorded on any official city map.
Here they were made visible for the first time – not by satellite images or consultants, but by the people who experienced them. Lüderitz, a once quiet coastal town in southern Namibia, is undergoing transformation, driven by emerging industries such as green hydrogen.
The world is urbanizing at a pace that far exceeds institutional capacity of many cities. More than half of humanity – 55% – already lives in cities.
By 2050, this number will rise to 70% or about 7 in every 10 people. According to United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), most of this growth is happening in smaller cities and secondary cities, where infrastructure is least resilient and data systems are weakest.
Meanwhile, 70% of cities around the world are already struggling with the effects of climate change. Roughly the equivalent of saying every major city you can name, bar a handful, is now dealing withextreme heat, rising sea levels, and persistent droughts. Vulnerabilities are gender specific. They are emotional.
They change with the seasons, the time of day and mobility. Without mapping them, cities build on blind trust. Lüderitz shows what happens when cities decide otherwise.
The vulnerability mapping assessments conducted recently in Lüderitz was not a technical ticking box. It was an act of democratic visibility.
Residents identified footpaths, unsafe hot spots, safe playgrounds, and preferred locations for streetlights and floodlights — not as passive informants, but as experts in their own living environment.
The maps generated are not just documents that are filed in a filing cabinet, they are dialogue and negotiation tools that build trust between municipal authorities, local decision-makers, and residents.
Who have had difficulty understanding each other in the past. This is exactly the kind of sound intelligence that modern urban development needs.
Vulnerability mapping, when done correctly, follows multi-layered principles. It shows exactly where risks exist — whether they come from the way neighbourhoods are built or from natural features like steep slopes, fierce winds or rising water.
It looks at vulnerability from different angles — how people live, how they move, how they earn a living, and whether their neighbourhoods have the basic services they need.
It also works at different scales, showing how something as small as a single footpath can reveal wider patterns of safety, access, and opportunity across the whole town. And, most importantly, it looks ahead.
It helps communities and leaders understand how new industries, rising populations or shifts in climate might reshape everyday risks in the years to come. Lüderitz is hardly alone in needing this kind of clarity.
Around the world, when cities do not fully understand the everyday risks faced by their residents, the consequences become painfully visible. The issue is never just the absence of vulnerability mapping — but its absence removes a crucial layer of insight that could have prevented or reduced harm.
The irony is that the global community already recognises the importance of localised, data-driven adaptation — at least in rhetoric. Yet less than 10% of global climate finance goes to local efforts, and only 29% of climate finance supports adaptation, even though developing countries will need $140 billion to $300 billion annually by 2030 to cope with escalating climate impacts.
Cities are expected to build resilience while lacking the very resources that make smart planning possible — not only predictable funding, but also technical capacity, granular disaggregated data, enabling legislation, and the institutional stability required to safeguard communities.
This is precisely where vulnerability mapping proves its worth. It plugs the gaps left by outdated datasets, distant decision-making and planning systems that overlook the lived realities of ordinary people.
By revealing where risks cluster, who is most affected, and how daily life actually unfolds on the ground, vulnerability mapping gives cities the intelligence they need before they design policies, spend scarce resources or commit to long-term infrastructure.
Critics often argue that mapping vulnerability is slow, expensive, or too participatory — that small communities lack the time or technical capacity to do it. But that misses the point.
The cost of mapping vulnerabilities is trivial compared to the cost of rebuilding homes lost to flooding, retrofitting poorly located infrastructure, or treating vulnerabilities until they become headlines. Ignoring risks does not save money, it just shifts the bill — often to the poorest residents who can least afford it.
The truth is simple, cities cannot respond to risks they do not see, and they can see the risks well if they ask the people who live with them. Lüderitz, which stands at the cusp of the green-industrial future, offers an important lesson for cities throughout the Global South.
Industrial progress without social intelligence is a recipe for deepening inequality. Mapping vulnerability is not a luxury. It is the basis for integrated urban development that is safe, fair, and future oriented.
If cities are serious about building resilience, protecting women and children, and ensuring that new industries do not replicate old damage, then they need to put vulnerability mapping at the heart of every planning decision.
Urban transformation should not start with blueprints designed in far-flung offices. It should start with a walkable map on the ground, a circle of residents gathering around it, and the courage to ask a simple question: Where do you feel unsafe, and why?
*Vivian !Nou-/Gawaseb is an adviser to the GIZ Integrated Urban Development Project, which supports the Lüderitz Town Council and the Aus Settlement Office in strengthening urban management capacities, integrated spatial planning and a just transition.
