COVID-19 and the Future of Our Cities

COVID-19 has hit cities particularly hard, some of them harder than others. The extent to which cities have been affected depends on a variety of factors including, first and foremost, the approaches taken to address the outbreak. However, the current pandemic also highlights an urban fabric that is divided along class, gender, race, and income as much as it reveals the vulnerability of supply chains, the strengths and weaknesses of social cohesion in urban neighborhoods, the need for mass transportation alternatives, and the increasingly blurred boundaries between work and residential environments, among others. Once they reemerge from their lockdowns, what will cities look like in the months and years to come? How do we make our cities more resilient vis-à-vis future pandemics and the consequences of climate change? This series of online conversations brings together urban planners, community leaders as well as experts in fields such as public health, sociology, logistics and transportation to help us understand how COVID-19 will affect how we think about the city of tomorrow.

Our first conversation will focus on the impact of COVID-19 on the poor, minorities and immigrants in post-industrial cities such as the Ruhr region, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. What is the role of place, race and class in the current pandemic, and how might we rethink city planning and public health practices and policies to combat future pandemics?