Abstract from UNESCO Cities Platform, “Urban Solutions: Learning from cities responses to COVID-19”
More than 4 months after the global outbreak of the pandemic, many cities around the world have started easing measures and working towards early recovery. As soon as measures are being eased, the management of the ongoing crisis needs to go hand in hand with a multidimensional recovery process, in which different sectors —often at different speeds—restart.
Lockdown is in principle relatively straightforward, gradually re-opening is considerably more complex. Early recovery is perhaps the most difficult phase for central governments to devise clear guidelines, because of the different speeds with which sectors will restart, the different needs of different parts of the populations, and of different localities. Therefore, cities play a crucial role, perhaps even more so than during the acute lockdown phase. We have seen local governments leading the way for safely reopening businesses and guiding larger numbers of visitors. How did cities communicate these changing measurements? How was information shared, social networks used, and the urban environment adapted— e.g. info panels, markings, limiting traffic, etc.—to manage this phase? How did cities come up with better provisions for public hygiene and other services, capacities for which vary vastly across the world, and even within cities?
All of this can be particularly challenging for cities, because of their impact on people beyond their own inhabitants. Whereas the acute phase—often in the form of a lockdown—focused on the cities’ inhabitants, deconfinement reignites a cities’ central role within a broader region, drawing workers and commuters, but also students, shoppers, visitors and tourists. Whereas safe, distanced ways for using public transport, or for accessing green areas may have been manageable during lockdown, all this tends to become much more challenging once the city is no longer reserved for inhabitants only. In this, the strength of cities as a catalyst for regional economies, education and social and cultural life can easily become a weakness if not managed properly. Luckily, cities of all sizes, all over the world, have found or are making efforts towards ways to address these particular challenges. What were some of the ways in which this has been handled?
Thanks to this catalysing role, cities also tend to be the beating heart of countries. They are where people go to work, to seek higher education, to enjoy a museum or attend a concert. They are transit points for workers and commuters, within a country and internationally. This is what makes cities vibrant, diverse and creative. While this vitality is essential for city life, it may be particularly hard to reinvigorate it. Deconfinement was much longed for, but people may be hesitant to once again move in large groups, to visit a restaurant, go shopping or make a trip. Safety had to remain a priority, which resulted in a fragile balancing of restrictions with encouraging “life”. How did various sectors cooperate to bring their cities back to life? How were citizens encouraged to safely engage, interact and take part in post-lockdown life?
Restarting the economy in such a manner often required thinking out of the box, and tapping into new markets. All over the world, SMEs, cultural enterprises, and sites and businesses depending on tourism revenue had to be creative and innovate, often using this time to rethink business models and audiences. From a museum needing to rely on local visitors, to young designers making hip facial masks, schools providing distance education, and cities easing rules for placing terraces or markets on public terrain; what are some of the ways in which businesses, public and private, have repositioned themselves, to develop new products or attract new publics? How have cities aided these sectors?
This panel sought to illustrate how cities have implemented measures to initiate recovery, balancing confinement restrictions with a gradual re-opening across sectors. This included restarting the local economy and tourism, devising ways in which cultural and educational institutions can be mobilized, engaging with youth and enhancing mobility.
Questions for Reflections
- How to jumpstart the local economy and livelihoods by creating an enabling environment for local businesses, especially SMEs? How to achieve this objective with certain restrictions still in place?
- How to support. educational, cultural and social participation, promoting social cohesion and local development in the early recovery stage?
- How to mitigate the medium-term impacts on vulnerable sectors, groups and individuals?
- How to engage young people? What particular measures have been and could be devised for them?
- How do cities address the particular challenges of deconfinement, such as bringing back people from outside the city?
- How can we ensure that local policy responses are inclusive? How can we foster an approach that is inclusive and works for different communities as a whole?
- How could local city measures and initiatives influence national and regional levels to have a broader impact?
Mr. David Wilson, Director of Bradford UNESCO Creative City of Film moderated the debate by introducing the that focused on how cities have implemented measures to initiate recovery, including, enabling the restart of the local economy and tourism, devising ways in which cultural and educational institutions can be mobilized, and engaging with youth and enhancing mobility.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PANEL: GENERAL SUMMARY
Ms. Geraldina González de la Vega Hernández, President of the Council to Prevent and Eliminate Discrimination of Mexico City (COPRED), began the debate by explaining the role of Mexico City during the pandemic. She accentuated the role that discrimination plays in how the pandemic affects people across gender, class, disability, status and sexual orientation. Ms. González de la Vega Hernández stated that clearly “the pandemic did not provoke the inequality that we are now seeing, it just rose the inequality gaps and social injustice.” She concluded her intervention by stating “quarantine is a privilege” because “not everyone can stay home,” citing homeless people, sex workers, migrants and other groups.
Following this, Ms. Andrea Laverde, Deputy Director of International Relations of the Office of the Mayor of Bogotá, presented the city’s approach to both the response and reopening process. Ms. Laverde explained how the city changed the way they were taking care of health—how they used both public and private networks to guarantee that every citizen could have proper health care no matter their affiliation to the health care system. In addition, they city implemented special care zones, differentiated programmes depending on vulnerabilities, and a 24-hour day scheme for the economy. She stated that the pandemic led the city to “revisit their 4-year plan to build a more resilient society” with a social and environmental focus, and then concluded by saying that there is a need to “fight disadvantages and structures shaped by racism, classism and chauvinism in our society.”
Speaking from a culture perspective, Mr. Jordi Pascual, Coordinator, Culture Committee, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), focused on culture as the center for urban policies. During the crisis, UCLG wrote a decalogue with ten points that puts culture at the center as, “culture is central to people’s lives…diversity, heritage and culture [should be] at the core of any international plan.” He stressed the importance of an inclusive approach, stating, “We are here together. We are inhabitants of the earth.”
Mr. Vimlendu Jha, Environmentalist, Founder of Swechha, brought the environmental point of view. His insights reflected that of the previous speakers, stating that the “new normal cannot go back to the previous normal, it needs a disruption.” The focus was on how democracy has not been equitable for everyone, and how cities have failed to ensure equal access to services and participation among its inhabitants. “We have been using private solutions to solve public problems – it needs to be reversed.” He also brought attention to the air pollution problem, stating “air pollution doesn’t attract attention as much as this virus is attracting. We have been dying. The poorest of the poor have been dying. We need to think about it.”
With a focus on the economy, Ms. Jia Zhou, Researcher, Wuhan Academy of Educational Sciences, explained how the city of Wuhan is aiding the economy through temporarily postponing repayment loans and the implementation of social security fees for SMEs and more established enterprises. She highlighted that “the joint participation of [the] whole society” was a key contributing factor in dealing with the pandemic.
In conclusion, Debate II emphasized the need to build cities that are more inclusive across economic, social and environmental domains for a more sustainable future. Cities cannot go back to a situation of huge injustices and inequalities. The widening of the inequality gap should be stopped. The pandemic made many inequalities more visible, ones that we cannot look away from, even as we face the challenge of implementing de-confinement measures.