Deadline: 6-Feb-22
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), through its Cities Laboratory, has launched the challenge Cities for All, which seeks to identify urban challenges that accentuate inequality in Latin American and Caribbean cities.
The initiative will support challenges that can be solved through experimentation processes, such as prototype schemes, pilots, iterative models of solutions, among others, to design innovative, replicable, and scalable solutions.
Focus Areas
The call focuses on identifying problems in the following areas:
- Poor access to financing and quality housing solutions;
- Inadequate access to basic services;
- The socio-spatial disconnection of informal neighborhoods from formal ones;
- Limited or no access to information and communication technologies;
- Vulnerability and resilience to climate change and natural disasters; and
- Limited formal employment opportunities
Funding Information
Six semi-finalist teams will be selected to participate in a mentoring process to improve the definition of the challenge, which will be presented at a pitch day. From these, three teams will be selected to receive technical assistance from the IDB, up to $35,000, to work on an iterative process of experimentation consisting of the co-design, implementation, and evaluation of a prototype or pilot project that will contribute to solving the posed challenge.
What Are they Looking for?
- The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), through its Cities Lab, seeks to identify urban challenges associated with systemic vulnerabilities that accentuate inequality in Latin American and Caribbean cities.
- By systemic vulnerabilities they refer to: deficient access to financing and quality housing solutions; inadequate access to basic services; the socio-spatial disconnection of informal neighborhoods from formal ones; limited or no access to information and communication technologies; vulnerability and resilience to climate change and natural disasters; and limited opportunities for formal employment.
- They seek to identify challenges that can be solved with experimental approaches (prototype schemes, pilots, iterative models of solutions, etc.), in order to design innovative, replicable and scalable solutions.
Eligible Countries
This call for proposals is aimed at entities from the 26 IDB borrowing countries, which are: Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Eligibility Criteria
- Cities from the IDB’s 26 borrowing member countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are eligible to participate, specifically, entities that promote urban innovation as part of or in partnership with city governments. Urban innovation laboratories, universities, innovation agencies, or civil society groups associated with one or more city governments are encouraged to apply.
- Entities that promote urban innovation, as part of or in alliance with city governments, may participate. For example:
- An urban innovation laboratory or an innovation office/unit that is part of a city government.
- A national, regional or local innovation agency or laboratory that is associated with one or more city governments.
- A university or civil society group, working on innovation in cities, that is associated with one or more city governments.
For more information, visit https://www.iadb.org/en/news/idb-launches-call-proposals-urban-challenges-latin-america-and-caribbean
