Webinar “Cities on the frontline: Managing the coronavirus crisis”

The COVID-19 crisis has unfolded in an urbanised world in which globally interconnected cities and urban density have accelerated and intensified the pandemic’s impact. However, cities have also been at the forefront of managing the crisis and supporting citizens. While initially national governments took the lead in responding to the emergency, cities have been dealing with most of its on-the-ground socioeconomic repercussions. Among other things, they have reinforced municipal health infrastructures, reinvented essential services such as transport and waste management, reorganised public space to ensure social distancing, supported small local businesses and entrepreneurs, and attended to the most vulnerable. At the same time, urban communities have mobilised to launch countless civil society initiatives that have complemented and filled the gaps of government action. 

To mark the publication of the CIDOB Report Cities on the Frontline: Managing the Coronavirus Crisis, CIDOB’s Global Cities Programme hosts an online panel discussion between Philipp Rode, Executive Director of LSE Cities and Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, Ian Klaus, Senior Fellow on Global Cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Susan Parnell, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cape Town and the University of Bristol, and Hannah Abdullah, Research Fellow with the Global Cities Programme at CIDOB, moderated by Agustí Fernandez de Losada, Director of the Global Cities Programme at CIDOB. The discussion will reflect on key insights generated by the report and look more broadly at the challenges and opportunities of urban governance in a post-pandemic world.

>> The conference will be streamed live at CIDOB’s Youtube channel.