{"id":1297,"date":"2026-01-26T10:16:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T10:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/per\/?p=1297"},"modified":"2026-01-26T10:16:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T10:16:37","slug":"infrastructure-disruptions-resilience-and-economic-mobility-in-the-off-grid-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/per\/2026\/01\/26\/infrastructure-disruptions-resilience-and-economic-mobility-in-the-off-grid-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Infrastructure\u00a0Disruptions,\u00a0Resilience\u00a0and\u00a0Economic Mobility\u00a0in the Off-Grid City\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Professor Federico Caprotti and Dr Whitney Pailman share updates on their work exploring the relationship between community resilience, entrepreneurship, economic mobility and navigating infrastructure disruptions in urban, informal settlements in South Africa. With support from the Engaged and Participatory Research Fund, the researchers worked closely with local residents and policymakers.<\/strong> <strong>  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amount of award: \u00a33529<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our&nbsp;project engaged residents of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Qandu-Qandu&nbsp;informal settlement in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. Building on earlier off-grid innovation pilots,&nbsp;including solar energy initiatives and business models,&nbsp;urban innovation and overlapping infrastructures,&nbsp;and work on&nbsp;\u2018traumatic infrastructures\u2019*,&nbsp;it brought together perspectives from energy access and urban geography.&nbsp;This&nbsp;work&nbsp;aimed to highlight the links between community resilience, entrepreneurship, economic mobility, and navigating infrastructure disruptions in South African informal settlements.&nbsp;Community voices were at the centre of this&nbsp;project,&nbsp;offering insights into off-grid infrastructures, lived experiences of disruption to infrastructure, and entrepreneurship as a pathway to economic mobility.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Using a combination of collaborative workshops,&nbsp;co-designing&nbsp;sessions,&nbsp;and the creation of a co-produced video,&nbsp;we&nbsp;invited community members to share their first-hand experience of infrastructure&nbsp;disruptions,&nbsp;resilience, and economic mobility.&nbsp;The workshops&nbsp;in particular&nbsp;brought&nbsp;together residents of the&nbsp;Qandu-Qandu&nbsp;community, City of Cape Town policymakers,&nbsp;researchers from both&nbsp;University of Cape Town&nbsp;and University of Exeter, and&nbsp;a&nbsp;local&nbsp;consultancy,&nbsp;Transition Partners.&nbsp;The sessions highlighted&nbsp;key challenges associated with \u201ctraumatic infrastructures\u201d,&nbsp;daily strategies, and&nbsp;motivating factors for participants,&nbsp;as well&nbsp;as helping us&nbsp;identify&nbsp;research questions and gaps.&nbsp;These activities&nbsp;also&nbsp;indicated&nbsp;possible next steps for policymakers,&nbsp;identifying&nbsp;areas where policy messaging could be strengthened through&nbsp;better&nbsp;communication of community insights.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Community members&nbsp;reported&nbsp;that they found the sessions and the broader research process beneficial,&nbsp;particularly the opportunity&nbsp;for&nbsp;direct policy engagement,&nbsp;and&nbsp;having a platform to communicate their daily, often overlooked&nbsp;challenges&nbsp;to policymakers at the City level.&nbsp;Participants&nbsp;appreciated that the work would be shared through a range of outputs,&nbsp;to enable&nbsp;their perspectives&nbsp;to reach&nbsp;wider audiences.&nbsp;The sessions invited them to learn how others in the community practically navigated daily challenges, as well as the diverse ways in which they&nbsp;demonstrated&nbsp;resilience. The workshops also created a space for sharing information on issues that, despite their importance, often receive limited practical attention within relevant policy spheres.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through our&nbsp;co-produced video session,&nbsp;participants&nbsp;were able to&nbsp;communicate key messages and lived experiences in a moving and&nbsp;accessible&nbsp;way.&nbsp;Its visual and narrative format allowed for a depth of expression that resonated strongly with both community members and external stakeholders.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Intentional, collaborative research design&nbsp;was vital for keeping&nbsp;participants meaningfully engaged throughout,&nbsp;and enabling&nbsp;genuine co-production. Giving participants space to define the most critical issues helps surface new, underexplored research avenues and reveal important connections across topics. While translating these insights into policy is a longer-term process,&nbsp;our&nbsp;work highlights valuable&nbsp;policy implications for&nbsp;off-grid innovation&nbsp;and&nbsp;the navigation of&nbsp;infrastructure-linked trauma&nbsp;in urban informal settlements. It also underscores the need for creative, tailored dissemination to ensure messages reach and resonate with diverse audiences.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We plan to take forward research on the energy-digital access nexus in informal urban areas, an important but&nbsp;largely unexplored&nbsp;perspective&nbsp;which has&nbsp;emerged&nbsp;from the&nbsp;engaged and&nbsp;participatory sessions.&nbsp;This&nbsp;Engaged and Participatory Research funding has been crucial in enabling meaningful dialogue with community members and stakeholders, and we aim to build on these networks through future follow-on funding and collaborative grant proposals. Ongoing, close engagement with local communities&nbsp;remains&nbsp;essential for developing effective solutions to&nbsp;these complicated energy and infrastructure challenges.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>*<\/em><em>&nbsp;&#8216;traumatic infrastructures&#8217; refers to the trauma that arises from (ongoing) exposure to unsafe, unreliable, or inadequate infrastructure and services. In urban informal settlements, this includes daily risks such as fires, flooding, and chronic shortages of water, sanitation, and electricity. Our work has found that such exposure creates stress and anxiety, not only from the events themselves but from the constant need to&nbsp;<\/em><em>anticipate<\/em><em>&nbsp;and mitigate their impacts. The concept encompasses both the physical infrastructure and the socio-technical and socio-spatial systems that reproduce them, including governance gaps, unequal provision, and unaffordable basic services.<\/em><em><\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor Federico Caprotti and Dr Whitney Pailman share updates on their work exploring the relationship between community resilience, entrepreneurship, economic mobility and navigating infrastructure disruptions in urban, informal settlements in South Africa. With support from the Engaged and Participatory Research Fund, the researchers worked closely with local residents and policymakers.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2305,"featured_media":1301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Infrastructure\u00a0Disruptions,\u00a0Resilience\u00a0and\u00a0Economic Mobility\u00a0in the Off-Grid City\u00a0 - Public Engagement with Research (PER) at the University of Exeter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/per\/2026\/01\/26\/infrastructure-disruptions-resilience-and-economic-mobility-in-the-off-grid-city\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Infrastructure\u00a0Disruptions,\u00a0Resilience\u00a0and\u00a0Economic Mobility\u00a0in the Off-Grid City\u00a0 - Public Engagement with Research (PER) at the University of Exeter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Professor Federico Caprotti and Dr Whitney Pailman share updates on their work exploring the relationship between community resilience, entrepreneurship, economic mobility and navigating infrastructure disruptions in urban, informal settlements in South Africa. With support from the Engaged and Participatory Research Fund, the researchers worked closely with local residents and policymakers.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/per\/2026\/01\/26\/infrastructure-disruptions-resilience-and-economic-mobility-in-the-off-grid-city\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Public Engagement with Research (PER) at the University of Exeter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-01-26T10:16:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-01-26T10:16:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/per\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/327\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-09-111844.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"942\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"625\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Catherine H\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Catherine H\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/per\/2026\/01\/26\/infrastructure-disruptions-resilience-and-economic-mobility-in-the-off-grid-city\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/per\/2026\/01\/26\/infrastructure-disruptions-resilience-and-economic-mobility-in-the-off-grid-city\/\",\"name\":\"Infrastructure\u00a0Disruptions,\u00a0Resilience\u00a0and\u00a0Economic Mobility\u00a0in the Off-Grid City\u00a0 - 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