This project links two hitherto loosely connected issues, aiming to address one of the greatest challenges facing global society: providing refugees with life chances from the outset of displacement. It acknowledges a shortfall between the standardized refugee aid structures (camps and camp-like settings) and the current global trend of proactive, human-centered urban development.

The project aims to explore the connections between emergency and reception structures to bridge humanitarian and development efforts. The project fills this gap by prioritizing the role of planning. As a scientific discipline that theorizes the social divide and a professional field involved in camp planning and urban development, planning has the capacity to offer guidance to policy areas such as migration and asylum policy. This approach has the potential to facilitate a more sustainable socio-spatial and economic integration, thereby reducing the risk of exclusion and decline.

The research targets NGOs, IOs, state and non-state actors, refugees, politicians, and urban planners. To delve into the socio-spatial dynamics of the camp we use qualitative hermeneutic methods and quantitative spatial analysis. Our research team, comprising 9 scholars (NGO workers/professionals, research fellows, and professors), is spread across our case studies in Moldova, Jordan, and Switzerland.

For the scientific community, we support a reflection about camps as neighborhoods. For the professional community, we endeavor to illustrate the potential influence of planning on the social cohesiveness and urban integration of refugees. Furthermore, we commit to delivering scientific articles, a policy brief and a website/Facebook page delineating the implications of our findings to the stakeholders and refugees.