Virtual Event: Cities and Contagion – Implications of COVID-19 on Cities and the Urban Poor
Harvard Club of the United Kingdom and the GSD Alumni Council invite GSD alumni to join a virtual speaking event:
Speaker
Sameh Wahba, MUP’97, Ph.D’02, KSGEE’13
Global Director for the World Bank’s Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice
GSD Alumni Council Member
Co-host
Earle Arney, MArch ’93
GSD Alumni Council member
Event Details:
COVID-19 is threatening cities and communities across the globe in an unprecedented way. In addition to its impact on public health, the COVID-19 epidemic is generating multifaceted, and likely prolonged economic impacts, ranging from disrupted global supply chains to bankrupted small businesses, with significant job losses and impacts on livelihoods of people everywhere, and especially informal sector workers and those with irregular earnings and unstable jobs and lack safety nets to weather the crisis.
Many cities in developing countries – both megapolises and secondary cities alike – with limited capacity and without the needed emergency response and preparedness will likely be potential hotspots of virus transmission and contagion. One billion people live in slums and informal settlements in the developing world where social distancing is unfeasible and thus the risk of community transmission is very high. The lack of basic services and infrastructure, especially for hygiene (water, sanitation and waste collection) and health, and reliance on communal facilities (e.g. public standpipes or latrines) accelerates infection rates and compounds the difficulties of responding to the disease.
City governments are in the frontline of combating the COVID-19 epidemic together with national disaster risk management and public health authorities. City governments have critical responsibilities including: (i) city-wide emergency actions to prevent viral transmission and care for the affected; (ii) targeted emergency support to the most vulnerable people from a health and livelihood perspective; (iii) recovery efforts through implementation of economic recovery programs and investments targeted at firms, communities and livelihoods. At the same time, as a result of an important decline in and impact on economic activities, cities will have much lower levels of local revenues with which to discharge their responsibilities.
This presentation will discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on cities and the urban poor and will outline key priorities for action in the immediate, short and medium-term, as well reflect on how cities might fare in the future as a result of this pandemic.