Refugees in the City: How Humanitarian Migration Transforms Urban Areas Highlights Refugees reshape cities; they may strain services in the short term but offer long-run potential for new economic, civic, and demographic vitalization depending on responses by local leaders. - Humanitarian inflows differ from other migration in terms of the speed and scale of arrivals, presence of aid, camp spillovers, and shifting public attitudes. - Large arrivals can deepen inequality and tensions in poorer neighborhoods, yet also catalyze investment, services, and neighborhood revitalization. - Refugees often help revive shrinking towns and urban districts, but their contributions depend heavily on city leadership, planning, and funding. When people flee conflicts and other crises, most of them go to cities. Worldwide, approximately 70 percent of refugees live in urban areas, as do more than 40 percent of internally displaced people (IDPs).1 For many forced migrants, cities offer protection and hope for a brighter future. But the arrival especially of large numbers of refugees can also transform cities in positive and negative ways, by altering urban demographics and social cohesion; creating new demands for services, housing, and jobs; and by bringing new financial, skills, and other resources. These changes can either strain the host city or help it blossom. Recent displacement crises have shown that hosts’ initially positive response to displaced people can change if the cities are unable to provide the services and support that individuals—humanitarian migrants and long-term residents alike—need over the long term. Often, large-scale humanitarian migration exacerbates underlying urban tensions, which can create new animosities. Because refugees and IDPs often arrive suddenly and in large numbers, their arrival and continuing presence pose specific challenges for city leaders. This article, based in part on the author’s book, Host Cities: How Refugees Are Transforming the World’s Urban Settings, explores how humanitarian influxes