The New Urban Normal: Urban Sustainability and Resilience Post COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID19 pandemic has exposed several systemic failures and injustices in the way cities are planned and designed around the world. It has also exposed the failings due to lack of planning in most places in the Global South. Careful, inclusive and participatory spatial planning is thought to greatly strengthen the capacity of societies to withstand systemic shocks, as testified by the New Urban Agenda (2016), the Pact of Amsterdam (2016) and the New Leipzig Charter (2020). Integrated affordable housing, for instance, has come to the top of the agenda once again, now propelled by the realisation that slum dwellers (a staggering 1 billion people around the world) and homeless people are particularly vulnerable to health crises and other societal shocks. The pandemic has been saluted as an opportunity to implement far-reaching transformation of our societies towards sustainability and justice, but little signs of systemic change have actually surfaced. For example, several cities around the world claim they will overhaul public space, take space from private cars, and invest more on green spaces, bicycle paths and quality public mobility. But little has been said about addressing the structural causes of inequality. The champions of the circular economy salute the pandemic as a new dawn for more human-centred capitalism, for the abandonment of exploitation and unfair distribution, and a world where workers can find decent housing, health, work and leisure.
But what is actually happening on the ground?
This UTC explores some of these issues by giving a platform to people with knowledge from the ground. It also discusses the many advances being made towards an inclusive green transition, through the European Green Deal and a growing activist movement in the UK.
This event was organised by GUL, the Global Urban Lab of the TU Delft University of Technology, a communication and action platform that brings visibility and articulation to TU Delft staff and students doing work on topics of urbanisation in the Global South.