Urban flooding has become an increasingly critical challenge in Indonesian cities, exacerbated by climate change, rapid urbanization, and deteriorating conventional gray infrastructure. Green infrastructure emerges as a transformative approach to urban flood management, offering multifunctional benefits beyond traditional drainage systems. However, successful implementation faces significant governance and financing barriers. This conceptual paper examines governance models and financing mechanisms for green infrastructure deployment in Indonesian urban contexts, with specific focus on flood mitigation. Through synthesis of international best practices and Indonesian policy frameworks, this study proposes an integrated blue-green-gray governance model that combines nature-based solutions with engineered facilities. The analysis reveals that Public-Private Partnership schemes, combined with innovative financing instruments such as green bonds, land value capture, and climate funds, can address the infrastructure financing gap while ensuring long-term sustainability. The paper contributes to urban planning discourse by proposing a strategic framework that integrates fiscal policy, spatial planning, and multi-stakeholder governance for enhanced flood resilience. Findings suggest that decentralized implementation coupled with strong central coordination, clear regulatory frameworks, and community engagement are essential for effective green infrastructure deployment. This research offers actionable insights for policymakers, urban planners, and infrastructure developers in advancing sustainable flood management strategies aligned with Indonesiaâs climate adaptation goals and the 2045 vision
This paper proposes a distributed computing framework that integrates federated learning (FL) and blockchain-enabled smart contracts for automatic flood response management. FL is deployed to process time series sensor data locally for separate sensor devices by training a machine learning (ML) model and then aggregating the trained model parameters obtained from each sensor device to yield final predictions in terms of rainfall levels. The predicted precipitation levels are input into a predefined smart contract to automatically trigger mitigation strategies to be used by frontline safety and maintenance personnel. The results obtained using the proposed framework demonstrate both improved prediction accuracy and data privacy preservation. The validation effort shows that smart contracts can execute context-aware actions, thus enabling fast decision-making for flood response. The developed framework holds the potential to revolutionize decentralized data management, enhance efficient data processing, and ensure data privacy, transparent and secure data communication, and resilience against centralized failures, thereby enabling a more intelligent infrastructure management system to mitigate flood impacts.
This article discusses the concept of âlight workersâ which can address issues related to the high entry threshold for new nodes in Blockchain networks, particularly in Proof-of-Stake systems. The article describes the differences between light node concepts, classic light clients, and light workers. The authors propose a three-phase approach for introducing light workers into the Waterfall network, and provide a conceptual description of each phase. The first phase is described in detail. Additionally, the article includes calculations that justify the implementation of the proposed approach.
Global warming and climate change are responsible for many disasters. Floods pose a serious risk and require immediate management and strategies for optimal response times. Technology can respond in place of humans in emergencies by providing information. As one of these emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, drones are controlled in their amended systems by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In this study, we propose a secure method of flood detection in Saudi Arabia using a Flood Detection Secure System (FDSS) based on deep active learning (DeepAL) based classification model in federated learning to minimize communication costs and maximize global learning accuracy. We use blockchain-based federated learning and partially homomorphic encryption (PHE) for privacy protection and stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to share optimal solutions. InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) addresses issues with limited block storage and issues posed by high gradients of information transmitted in blockchains. In addition to enhancing security, FDSS can prevent malicious users from compromising or altering data. Utilizing images and IoT data, FDSS can train local models that detect and monitor floods. A homomorphic encryption technique is used to encrypt each locally trained model and gradient to achieve ciphertext-level model aggregation and model filtering, which ensures that the local models can be verified while maintaining privacy. The proposed FDSS enabled us to estimate the flooded areas and track the rapid changes in dam water levels to gauge the flood threat. The proposed methodology is straightforward, easily adaptable, and offers recommendations for Saudi Arabian decision-makers and local administrators to address the growing danger of flooding. This study concludes with a discussion of the proposed method and its challenges in managing floods in remote regions using artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
The couplings of convolutional neural networks (CNN) with random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), long short-term memory (LSTM), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) ensemble algorithms were used to construct novel ensemble computational models (CNN-LSTM, CNN-XG, CNN-SVM, and CNN-RF) for flood hazard mapping in the monsoon-dominated catchment, Bangladesh. The results revealed that geology, elevation, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and rainfall are the most significant parameters in flash floods based on the Pearson correlation technique. Statistical method such as the area under the curve (AUC) was used to evaluate model performance. The CNN-RF model could be a promising tool for precisely predicting and mapping flash floods as it is outperformed the other models (AUC = 1.0). Furthermore, to meet sustainable development goals (SDGs), a blockchain-based technology is proposed to create a decentralized flood management tool for help seekers and help providers during and post floods. The suggested tool accelerates emergency rescue operations during flood events.
Cities in the Middle East and North Africa are already suffering the effects of climate change. Weak urban regulation, ineffective climate policies, limited decentralization and insufficient empowerment of local authorities and civil society further decrease urban resilience. Future climate scenarios and projected urban growth threaten the stability of the region; with potential negative knock-on effects on Europe. This CASCADES Spotlight Study examines climate vulnerabilities in urban areas in countries to the south of the EU and the wider Middle East and North Africa region and advocates for systemic approaches to addressing urban climate resilience by strengthening the water-energy-food nexus, as well as other enabling factors such as decentralization. It concludes with recommendations on how the European Green Deal can help cities in the region adapt to climate impacts, based on a water-energy-food nexus approach. Over the past two decades, the European Commission has stepped up its support for urban climate action and resilience. An increasing number of programmes financed under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) South have addressed urban climate resilience in response to the regionâs rapid urbanization and the high climate vulnerability of cities. The number of urban dwellers in the wider Middle East and North Africa region is estimated to reach 527 million in 2050, an increase of 72% compared to 2020. At the same time, climate impacts â including both slow onset changes and sudden disasters â are putting additional stress on urban infrastructure. This stress is aggravated by weak urban regulations that have created unsustainable development trends which undermine the potential benefits of urbanization and adversely affect urban climate resilience. The prevalence of highly centralized administrative systems and incomplete decentralization reforms hamper local capacity building and decision-making, which are prerequisites for effective adaptation and resilience. At the same time, climate impacts â including both slow onset changes and sudden disasters â are putting additional stress on urban infrastructure. This stress is aggravated by weak urban regulations that have created unsustainable development trends which undermine the potential benefits of urbanization and adversely affect urban climate resilience. The prevalence of highly centralized administrative systems and incomplete decentralization reforms hamper local capacity building and decision-making, which are prerequisites for effective adaptation and resilience. The convergence of the regionâs harsh climatic conditions with rapid, unsustainable urbanization and the associated socio-economic burdens can exacerbate existing political instability, conflict-induced migration and poverty. These developments could cascade into the EU, altering security, trade and diplomatic relations with the Southern Neighbourhood. The EUâs evolving approach to working with local authorities on urban infrastructure and climate governance is a first step towards addressing the regionâs intertwined urban and climate crises. However, this approach is still in the early stages and there is a need to reflect on lessons learned and how urban spaces, climates and governance are evolving in the region. This study suggests that the EUâs overwhelming focus on supporting cities in the region with energy efficiency and the transition to sustainable energy systems is not enough to strengthen urban climate resilience. In cities of the Southern Neighbourhood, which typically struggle with resource management and scarcity, climate resilience will increasingly depend on local capacities to formulate and implement nexus approaches, especially in the water, energy and food sectors. Based on case studies of three small and intermediary urban areas, the study advocates for a systemic approach to addressing urban climate resilience in Southern Neighbourhood cities. Considering the established effectiveness of applying a water-energy-food nexus approach to improving climate resilience, the paper stresses the need for local governments to explore nexus opportunities between the water, energy and food sectors in order to achieve resilient and sustainable urbanism, while also highlighting other enabling factors such as decentralization. It concludes by exploring how future external action around the European Green Deal and its ambitions for systemic transformation could benefit from stepping up cooperation with cities in the Southern Neighbourhood around the water-energy-food nexus.
Alexandra Panman, Ian Madison, Nyambiri Nanai Kimacha, JeanâBenoĂŽt Falisse
Abstract This paper explores the role of savings groups in resilience to urban climate-related disasters. Savings groups are a rapidly growing phenomenon in Africa. They are decentralized, non-institutional groups that provide millions of people excluded from the formal banking sector with a trusted, accessible, and relatively simple source of microfinance. Yet there is little work on the impacts of savings groups on resilience to disasters. In this paper, we use a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) to shed new light on the role that savings groups play in helping households cope with climate-related shocks. Drawing on new data, we show that approximately one-quarter of households have at least one member in a group, and that these households recover from flood events faster than those who do not. We further argue that the structure of savings groups allows for considerable group oversight, reducing the high costs of monitoring and sanctioning that often undermine cooperative engagement in urban areas. This makes the savings group model a uniquely flexible form of financing that is well adapted to helping households cope with shocks such as repeated flooding. In addition to this, we posit that they may provide a foundation for community initiatives focusing on preventative action.
Emanuele Vannucci, Andrea Jonathan Pagano, Francesco Romagnoli
Abstract This work aims to offer a contribution in the analysis and management, from an economic and financial point of view, of the flood risk, and extended to the hydrogeological risk, from the perspective of a public administration. As main responsible actor for containing the phenomenon through the maintenance of the territory, public administration is responsible for the cost of restoring of the services that have been damaged by this type of phenomenon. The assets of which the public administration must ensure the restoration are all public infrastructures (i.e. transportation, energy and water supply system, communication) together with the damage suffered by private property, if these affect services to be guaranteed to the population. In this work, the authors propose possible strategies that a public administration can put in place to deal with flood risk. Three main strategies are analysed: an absolute passivity that provides for the payment of damages as they occur (i.e. business-as-usual scenario), a classic insurance scheme, a resilient and innovative insurance scheme. The economicâfinancial profiles of these strategies proposed in this work put an emphasis on how the assumption of a time horizon can change the convenience of one strategy compared to the others. This study highlights the key role of the quantification of flood risk mitigation measure from an engineering perspective, and their potential issues to pursue these objectives in connection to the regulatory framework of the public administrations. This synergy is supported by the potential use of Blockchain-based tools. Within the paper is highlighted the key role that such platform IT data management platform could have within risk analysis and management schemes, both as a data collection tool and as certification of the various steps necessary to complete the process.
Open access
Flood Risk Assessment and Management
Infrastructure Resilience and Vulnerability Analysis
How decentralized government structure influences public service delivery has been a major focus of debate in the public finance literature. In this paper, we empirically examine the effect of fiscal decentralization on natural disaster damages across the U.S. states. We construct a unique measure of decentralization using state and local government expenditures on natural resources, which include investment in flood control and mitigation measures, among others. Using stateâlevel panel data from 1982 to 2011, we find that states that are more decentralized in natural resource expenditures have experienced more economic losses from floods and storms. This effect is only pronounced in states that are at higher risks of flooding. Our findings suggest that fiscal decentralization may lead to inefficient protection against natural disasters and provide implications for the assignment of disaster management responsibilities across different levels of government in the U.S. federal system.
Sjon van Dijk, Amanda W. Lounsbury, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Ranran Wang
Many cities are confronted with both water scarcity and urban flooding as centralized water infrastructures becoming increasingly inadequate in a changing climate. Decentralized infrastructures like rainwater harvesting (RWH) can ease both issues. Yet, most studies find RWH offers limited infrastructure capacity at high cost. Previous assessments, however, fail to consider two critical advantages: multi-functionality and high adaptability. By improving the incorporation of these advantages in our analysis of 1.06 million buildings with distinct design and water demand characteristics and 20-year hourly precipitation records in New York City (NYC), we demonstrate, contrary to existing studies, that strategically designed, financed and implemented rooftop RWH systems in all or a subset of the buildings can meet large-scale infrastructure development needs for water supply and stormwater management. RWH implementation featuring public-private partnerships (PPP) in 43-96% of the buildings can serve 17-29% of the city's non-drinking water demands while reducing the public expenditure per unit of water supply by 13-85%. The distributed citywide RWH implementations prevent 35-56% of rooftop runoff from entering the sewage system, rivers, and/or waterways per month, with observed rooftop runoff reductions as high as 90% for a single rain event.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2015â30, calls for countries to strengthen disaster risk governance systems as a pathway to disaster risk reduction. This paper assesses the disaster risk governance system in Malawi, SubâSaharan Africa, to understand how the positioning of multiple actors is contributing to the creation of an environment generating either positive or negative outcomes. The study utilizes a landscape governance analytical framework grounded within network governance theory and predominantly relies on qualitative approaches. The study finds that nonâgovernmental organizations are delivering the majority of disaster risk management services in the country. However, there are shortfalls within and across key actors and institutions that are frustrating progress and could reverse isolated gains that the country has made. While central government is largely detached from communityâlevel implementation, its incapacity is worsened by politicians and local government actors who have positioned themselves to capture risk reduction finance. The paper, therefore, questions the rationale behind the urgency in decentralizing disaster risk governance before addressing critical challenges within the local government system. These findings, while specifically for Malawi, are also pertinent to other developing countries struggling to deal with the consequences of climate variability and change.
Adaptation finance is designed to help vulnerable populations withstand effects of climate variability and change. However, levels of vulnerability seldom determine finance distribution. Political and economic preferences of national and local government decision-makers tend to direct funding streams. This article takes an institutional approach to adaptation finance allocation by comparing decentralized and devolved local governance structures managing adaptation finance in Kenya before and after the Constitution of 2010. Prior to reforms, funding was directed through decentralized mechanisms operating within district councils and local authorities; recently, devolution of political, administrative, and fiscal decision-making to county governments coincided with piloting of new local adaptation funds. Theory suggests that devolution institutionalizes more participative decision-making and fairer allocations. Evidence suggests vulnerable communities are indeed more likely to access, design, and receive allocations of finance in devolved political systems.
William Siembieda, Laurie A. Johnson, Guillermo Franco
The Chilean earthquake and tsunami disaster of 27 February 2010 impacted 12 million people in 900 cities and towns, causing more than US$30 billion in losses. This paper considers how the national government responded to the challenges of coastal and urban reconstruction, and examines the actions taken in the housing, land use mitigation planning, insurance, and risk reduction management sectors. The Chilean government utilized a mixed decentralized model for recovery management with strong direction from the nationalâlevel ministries and subnational planning and housing efforts at the regional and municipal levels. The national recovery plan guiding principles are used in this paper as a framework for progress. In 12 months, a series of temporary shelter villages and a system of recovery housing subsidies were established; riskâbased land use plans were conducted in various coastal areas; a finance plan was adopted; changes to the national emergency management agency were made; and rapid payment of insurance claims were completed. Conflicts did arise related to the speed of housing recovery support, expropriation of land sites as future tsunami protection barriers, and extent of public participation in recovery plan making.
B. Balamurugan, T. Poongodi, M. R. Manu, S. Karthikeyan ¡ 5 authors
The moving image archive of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) includes a copy of the film The Double Day (1975), cataloged in the series Moving Images Relating to International Development Programs and Activities, 1979â1991, a collection of more than eight hundred titles âcreated to provide information on assistance programs supported by the Agency for International Development (AID).â1 Yet, The Double Day does not, in fact, directly depict or engage with any specific development or aid initiative. Instead, the filmâdirected by US-based Brazilian filmmaker Helena Solberg as part of the International Womenâs Film Project collective and described as âthe first Latin American feminist documentaryââexamines the gendered dynamics of paid and unpaid labor through the testimonies of women from Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico.2 Its presence in the USAID archive is likely a consequence of its funding history, having received support from the Inter-American Foundation, a USAID-affiliated entity; the development agencies of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; the United Nations Development Program; and US philanthropist Calvin Cafritz.3These transnational funding structures not only enabled the filmâs production but also determined its archival destination, which renders legible its place within the history of international development.4 The Double Dayâs institutional trajectory reflects the shifting configurations of aid, gender, and media during a historic moment when women were being repositioned at the center of what Arturo Escobar has described as developmentâs âregimes of visuality.â5 Especially relevant to The Double Dayâs production and exhibition was the international institutional framework of Women in Development (WID). Emerging in the early 1970s and culminating in United Nationsâ proclamation of 1975 as International Womenâs Year, WID emphasized womenâs participation in the global economy as both an index and mechanism of development. Indeed, The Double Day premiered at the World Conference of the International Womenâs Year, held in Mexico City.6 Within this context, the film forms part of a broader trajectory of media use by international organizations that intensified during the 1970sâas best exemplified by Media Habitat, a collection of 236 documentary films commissioned by the United Nations to represent urban and rural development initiatives for the 1976 Habitat Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver. As a policy-shaping initiative, Media Habitat primarily featured films from the Global South intended not only to illustrate but also to help codify standardized audiovisual markers of âunderdevelopmentâ that determined access to the emerging global economic order and to international aid.7Framed in relation to these international institutions and their operations, The Double Day could similarly be considered âdevelopment mediaââexemplifying the type of nonfiction media produced and distributed outside of the commercial film circuits whose aspects and subcategories have been variously described in scholarship as nontheatrical, useful, sponsored, institutional, industrial, educational, or nonprofessional/amateur.8 Scholars working in this area have emphasized the institutional contexts of such mediaâs production and exhibition infrastructures as shaping its instrumentalized effects. From a feminist perspective, such an approach is crucial to grappling with the broader question of how âgender impacts [these worksâ] shape, content, and trajectories.â9 Yet we also argue that, taken in isolation, the institutional and infrastructural contexts are insufficient to account for the complex relationship between media and development, potentially not only limiting our understanding of the reach and impact of development but also distorting our interpretive conclusions. For example, to categorize The Double Day as âdevelopment mediaâ is to overlook the filmâs place within Solbergâs directorial oeuvre, as well as within the histories of both transnational womenâs filmmaking and radical Latin American documentary cinema to which it simultaneously belongs. Such exclusive framing is especially limiting given that women globally were disproportionately engaged in nonfiction production throughout the twentieth centuryâsometimes by political choice but more often due to structural exclusions from fiction filmmaking. Even in nonfiction historiography, however, institutional media has remained particularly marginal, reinforcing hierarchies that separate such works from the aesthetic and authorial frameworks through which film history has been constructed.10 This marginalization not only tends to erase womenâs contributions but also presumes a âweakâ or derivative authorship, rendering these films unworthy of the interpretive attention needed to apprehend their aesthetic and political complexity.11 The same dynamic is likely to structure assumptions about âdevelopment mediaâ as well.Categorizing The Double Day exclusively within this category would further prompt us to assume top-down institutional analyses that have been characteristic of both institutional media methodologies and the scholarship on development at large. This, in turn, would risk obscuring this filmâs radical Marxist approach to womenâs labor as well as its concrete contribution to activism and its attendant grassroot structures. In Mexico City, The Double Day became a catalyst for feminist solidarity in practice when one of the filmâs protagonists, Bolivian activist and trade unionist Domitila Barrios de Chungara, was invited to participate in the Tribune of Non-Governmental Organizations held alongside the official UN conference.12 There, Barrios de Chungara challenged Western feminist priorities by reframing the debate around labor, class, and imperialism, helping to articulate a shared Third World feminist agenda that significantly departed from the developmentalist vision of the United Nations and USAID.13 Seen through the lens of activist media, The Double Day helped forge transnational solidarity networks by enabling information exchange across the diverse voices that shaped its makingâfrom the women featured in the film to the activists who circulated itârevealing a considerably more dynamic interplay between institutional and grassroots or contingent media practices.Moreover, the filmâs Latin American contextâreflected in Solbergâs formation in Brazil as the only woman in Cinema Novo, its focus on women from across the region, and its premiere and key reception in Mexico Cityârequires grappling with the regional specificities of the very notion of development in its multiple iterations.14 Far from being an epistemological and political framework imposed solely by the Global North, both the practices of development and the theoretical foundations of developmentalism (understood as a broad and polysemic set of discourses) were shaped through the active participation of Latin American economists.15 Within this iteration, underdevelopment, as a constitutive notion of developmentalism, became central to a distinctly critical strand, which by the late 1960s became known as the dependency theory.16 This same approach is reflected in some of the best-known Latin American radical film manifestos of the time, arising precisely from the same milieus to which Solberg belonged.17These various considerations of the filmâs history illustrate the methodological challenges confronting feminist scholars seeking to assess the impact of development on media projects, theories, and practices. To disregard the developmentalist context of such works by emphasizing their political aesthetics and affects risks reproducing a romanticized narrative of heroic resistance (albeit from a feminist perspective). Yet to engage exclusively with their institutional and material infrastructures risks naturalizing developmentalismâs political and epistemological foundations at the expense of the goals and beliefs of the many women who participated in these projects. The contradictions and ambivalences that animate such histories call for feminist frameworks capable of holding both institutional complicity and radical possibility in view.This challenge resonates with ongoing debates about the politics of the archive and what Allyson Field has termed âthe practice of informed speculation.â18 As she reminds us, feminist, queer, and decolonial methodologies have long taught us to âpress at the limitsâ of the archive to âinoculate our scholarship against our evidenceâs afflictions.â19 The concern that the evidence we draw on in our analysis reproduces the very structures and blind spots of the dominant ideology and therefore shapes and delimits our interpretation becomes particularly urgent when engaging the developmentalist media corpus. Informed speculation offers an alternative by inviting the experimental, creative, and speculative rewriting of history, mobilizing the archive âin a project that runs counter to the original purpose, or the imperative to preserve, or the conditions that led to erasure.â20 Yet, as Field cautions, such speculative gestures must remain grounded in a deep and âintimate familiarity with the archiveâ that we are working with and against. Building on this imperative, we suggest that the developmentalist archive, in particular, demands expansion and critical reconsideration in ways that unsettle the very disciplinary frameworks through which it has been studied as well as the larger institutional contexts for such knowledge production.Our focus on The Double Day in the opening of this introduction thus foregrounds the entanglements of institutional and grassroots forces, local and international contexts, structural and interpersonal relations, and creative and economic factors that have shaped not only this film but the broader ecosystem of development media projectsâand their preservationâover time. Addressing such a constellation involves transgressing methodologically entrenched divisions between political economy and aesthetics, between material infrastructures and affective regimes; reckoning with divergent periodizations across film history and world economics; and situating these within the local specificities of womenâs movements and international institutional programs. It also demands attentiveness to the coexistence of multiple, and sometimes competing, understandings of developmentâeach historically, geographically, and ideologically situated.We imagine this special issue as an opening toward a critical dialogue, not only about how such an approach might be enacted in practice but also about the far-reaching ways development paradigms have shaped both our objects of study and the contours of the field itself. The decision to center institutionally sponsored films across all the essays in this issue is deliberate and enables us to highlight institutional critique as a vital methodological imperative within our analytical framework. Created within the frameworks of international organizations, state agencies, or NGOs, these filmsâ histories make legible the institutional logics that underwrite their production. Yet our critique does not stop at these specific entities. Rather, we argue for a broader interrogation of the political conditions and institutional infrastructures that shape media and knowledge production more generally. This includes contemporary corporations embedded in the digital platform economy, from streaming services to the rapid expansion of AI. Equally critical is a reflexive examination of academia itself, where departments of economics, political science, and centers for development have played a formative role in producing and legitimizing developmentalist theories and policy frameworks. While the humanities and arts have at times offered critical alternatives, they have also frequently mirrored and reinforced many of the same developmentalist assumptions. A feminist analysis of the nexus between development and media must therefore unsettle not only dominant archives but also the institutional and disciplinary foundations of our own scholarly practices.As scholars, we share the complex position of navigating the same tensions between institutional complicity and emancipatory aspiration as many of the media-makers whose work we study. Mirroring our subjects is also the transnational, collective mode of this special issueâs own production as it emerges from an ongoing informal working group we have sustained over several years. While relying on institutional and disciplinary affordancesâsuch as university funding for conferences or access to academic publishing platformsâwe have been working toward creating a community that exceeds, and often resists, the prevailing logics of our academic institutions. Our aim has been to create a space for shared inquiry and mutual support that pushes back against disciplinary siloing and technocratic neoliberal assessment modes of both labor and knowledge productionâand this certainly extends to our experience collaborating with the journal editors throughout the publication process. Our goal has been to examine both the persistence and variability of developmentalism, understood as what Gustavo Esteva calls a âpowerful but fragile semantic constellation,â as a conceptual formation that has historically inspired, legitimized, and mobilized media projects across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.21 And gendered biopolitics, from population control to gender mainstreaming, have remained integral to development policies and media practices, recurring across formats from institutional newsreels to film festivals.We share the conviction that, far beyond the history of nonfiction institutional media, development (as both a broad ideological project and a network of material and institutional practices) and developmentalism (as a set of discourses and theoretical models associated with development) have exerted a far-reaching influence on film and media cultures at large. As such, they must be treated as a major force in shaping global film and media systems and also the many ongoing assumptions behind their critical discourses. The discipline of communication studies was founded on modernization theory governed by Cold War goals of dissemination of Western liberal democracy around the world, while âan area studies framework allowed compartmentalizing Western and non-Western outcomes of technologies that were always claimed to be universal.â22 Despite critique from postcolonial and critical race studies, many of these frameworks have remained foundational for media theory.23 In historical scholarship, as we increasingly move beyond âmodernityâ as a dominant conceptual anchor, engaging with practices and discourses of development opens more precise analytical pathways. These film and mediaâs entanglements with the logics of and economic and the associated with as well as their conceptual underdevelopment, and impact in as diverse as and of media aesthetic and paradigms in film and film and funding are developmentalist assumptions to the they to underwrite the narrative and logics of and global media from the structure of the film to the cultures of argue that a examination of the historical entanglements between film and developmentalist aesthetics, modes of as well as infrastructures and critical the and that our contemporary media is a of the historical contours of development as a field of inquiry embedded within a of some of the methodologies by the featured in this special a of this complex history, to the larger at in media, development, and gender all its development a it as an of be with practices as divergent as and in In as we work on this the of the of the USAID the ideological that have the history of international the and of this on the global its a from development as a global practice and as an institutional and which over the has as a with its own media Yet or does not erase the historical impact of these the contradictions they have reflected and over the as the of development several crucial to the economic theories of development initiatives to and through the of the development an international policy framework at from the Global to the of the Global the by the political role of and the of the International the on was challenged by dependency theory and at development as global structural the neoliberal of the the Programs by the and World imposed and as conditions for and forms of assistance became known as the major markers for international development development has moving beyond economic to such as the Human Development and the Development and from international organizations such as the United Nations to a broader network of These frameworks increasingly of and liberal of and with what in many ways to various while the of the to developmentâs epistemological more scholarship has toward a of its and material the field has to a of and critical by and scholars, which development as a dynamic of conceptual and political to these the studies in this special issue call for sustained analysis in place of In we draw from a of and that in of of gender and to this special issue engage that and from Mexico to contemporary specific local historical of global distinctly feminist methodologies as well as attention to studies that this issue a in the global history of development on and documentary work in Mexico how early women infrastructures as of while US films an early of state and transnational on a outside the Global as the of developmentalist both the and markers of development media, its to the and Latin central grounded in archival also womenâs in transnational and the methodological of archives on study of the series to a a digital media not by but by women not as but as subjects and within circuits of neoliberal and the aesthetics and of how developmentâs has models of to contemporary neoliberal paradigms of and analysis how digital and gender and practices, discourses on and their of these essays the of some of the historical of developmentalist as the question of the role of the state within such on a notion of economic as a and the dominant of development that the state as the for and through infrastructural projects. This understanding of development was shared across both of the as well as in the Third The United and the increasingly mobilized international in the of the modes of international at the postcolonial of policy and ideological These programs were at the expansion of their and of while with the and decolonial of The conceptual between modernization and development that the Cold in of and hierarchies of that long and As an of postcolonial their role as of international aid concern about the of Western development projects. In alternative across the Global South that to structural between and through policies of and In many they were further the global structures. In Latin for example, this approach was through organizations such as the United Nations for Latin and the both developmentalist projects and their have taken many forms historically, and they have and they have been to a of projects, and postcolonial and development has been and in ways and with frequently political While many of these alternative frameworks the embedded in dominant Western they often technocratic and assumptions. gender and gender as for the of to be shaped by This becomes particularly in the media that of development where women frequently a crucial associated with and women were as both the subjects and of their participation in the and labor often as the index of In this study of from the 1970s how women were as of this as these about womenâs urban and recurring and of a within the own of and critique that official examination of archives and enables a feminist interrogation of their mobilizing a of the in the of contribution to this issue similarly the of a dynamic within as well as across ideological the of womenâs and the media of the and as active in labor and as integral to the technocratic women became of as their labor remained a of and analysis and archival with attention to the specific of and It also transnational that as a and affective a nexus of and practices through which gender, media, and developmentalism one film not as a but as part of the of alongside and work a broader concern of this special media as a of developmentalist projects. The debates the World and which international such as the United Nations and a critical historical for such primarily by postcolonial and of the for the of media and communication infrastructures in as to counter Western The a between and economic how systems of media and reinforced global hierarchies of and in an agenda that supported and alternative media infrastructures across postcolonial contexts, the framework gender as an analytical This âgender in the 1970s by of the Women in Development in relation to The Double its political critique of with its broader to center women in development policy through and This was also in of media, which was shaped by its international reach and audiovisual production and and and Yet, as WID institutional it also to the and of the womenâs development programs often by in These were by a of studies, and on and the to of womenâs presence and through the of their economic and In this on the filmmaker this history directly by the and of for women by the WID framework during the with and agencies the of and against Women in at the of the neoliberal turn, when institutional media often the only to access and support to projects. The an by this dynamic as of the from the Global South are to engage with the developmentalist assumptions funding models that their similarly the as a in developmentalist media history by the of and centers on the Film a between of and the attention toward the and labor by and work was foundational the of and the of audiovisual aid, as both a of development projects and a critical for their the in this issue argue for a with media, gender, and developmentalism as an field of that is and shaped by feminist and methodologies and that challenge the entanglements between academic knowledge production and and technocratic development And while methodological these dynamics at the structural the of feminist in media and cinema by this the very a