News

Will cities remain resilient in a post-COVID world? BBC asks Jerold Kayden

10th St. Perspective

Image from "Miami Beach Baywalk" by Chris Merritt (MLA '17).

Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design Jerold Kayden is one of a series of global thought leaders to be tapped by the BBC to provide insight into what life may be like in a post-COVID-19 world. Addressing how the coronavirus has exposed, and even sometimes accelerated, the flaws in certain areas of our urban environment, Kayden anticipates less activity and reduced tourism for the foreseeable future. At the same time, he believes history offers hope for the future of cities: “There is a raison d’etre for cities not so easily dislodged. The human thirst for live engagement with people and place is not easily quenched. In the past, in crisis after crisis, urban resilience has proved the skeptics wrong.”

Read Kayden’s full answer in the BBC’s Unknown Questions series.