Forcibly displaced populations are contributing to the trend towards increasing urbanisation: 60 per cent of all refugees and 80 per cent of all internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in urban areas as they search for employment or access to basic services. This influx of people is blurring the lines between formal neighbourhoods and informal settlements, forcing urban planners to redefine widely used concepts such as ‘slum’ or ‘suburbanisation’.

A good example is the Za’atari refugee camp, which has since grown to become the fourth largest city in Jordan. In an article posted on UNHCR Innovation, a branch of the UN's refugee agency, the designer and Hans Park says that a label like ‘refugee camp’ can be misleading as it often fails to describe the complete picture on the ground.

The focus should instead be on integrating displaced populations, he writes. In Germany for example, cities are expanding the role of civil society, using technology to promote community participation and rapidly building non-traditional housing in an effort to integrate refugees in a sustainable manner.

Urban planners and local governments can even learn from forcibly displaced populations how to use innovative processes to build communities in an effective, efficient, and human-centred way. “We have seen how displaced people use their extremely limited resources to […] re-shape their shelters, re-direct camp roads, open shops, create markets and even create micro-economies,” says Ruxandra Bujor, a camp management expert with UNHCR.