Next City: Learning from Cities During COVID-19 to Tackle Climate Change

Abstract

Fundamental principles of modern cities and urban planning are challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the advantages of large city size, high density, mass transport, free use of public space, unrestricted individual mobility in cities. These principles shaped the development of cities and metropolitan areas for more than a century, but currently, there are signs that they have turned from advantage to liability. Cities Public authorities and private organisations responded to the COVID-19 crisis with a variety of policies and business practices. These countermeasures codify a valuable experience and can offer lessons about how cities can tackle another grand challenge, this of climate change. Do the measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis represent a temporal adjustment to the current health crisis? Or do they open new ways towards a new type of urban development more effective in times of environmental and health crises? We address these questions through literature review and three case studies that review policies and practices for the transformation of city ecosystems mostly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: (a) the central business district, (b) the transport ecosystem, and (c) the tourism-hospitality ecosystem. We assess whether the measures implemented in these ecosystems shape new policy and planning models for higher readiness of cities towards grand challenges. And how, based on this experience, cities should be organized to tackle the grand challenge of environmental sustainability and climate change.

Innovative culture and rewards-recognition matter in linking transformational leadership to workplace digitalisation?

“…However, employees may experience new job demands, job displacements, and blurring the work-social life resulting from workplace digitalisation. Despite emerging as almost inevitable since the COVID-19 pandemic (Kakderi et al , 2021), workplace digitalisation is believed to require employees' micro-level change for the organisations to enjoy the transformative benefits (Meske and Junglas, 2021).…”

“…Workplace digitalisation is an organisation innovation exploiting digital technologies (Doran and Folan, 2021) to alter workplace systems, processes, modes of communication, and job designs to lower operating costs and improve business efficiencies. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated workplace digitalisation (Kakderi et al , 2021) following the human physical distancing constraints. The exponential growth of workplace digitalisation worldwide created digital inequalities between individuals, organisations, and nations regarding digitalisation infrastructure, technology equipment, and digitalisation capabilities (Ardelin, 2020).…”

Managing COVID‐19‐related knowledge: A smart cities perspective

“…The emergence of a new disease caused by novel coronavirus—2019 (SARS‐CoV‐2) or coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has caused major impacts both in human health and societal activities (Kummitha, 2020 ; Ehrenberg et al, 2021 ). Kakderi et al ( 2021 ) noted that the COVID‐19 pandemic brought significant disruptions in the foundations of economies, societies, countries, and cities all over the world. The first modern COVID‐19 pandemic was reported in December 2019, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China.…”

“…James et al ( 2020 ) argued that the COVID‐19 pandemic provides an unfortunate opportunity to understand and apply smart city technology in social welfare and crisis management. Kakderi et al ( 2021 ) noted that SC technologies and applications (e.g., sensors, data analytics, AI, IoT) can improve efficiency, awareness, and flexibility of urban ecosystems through real‐time adjustments and better decision‐making. Smart cities offer various technologies that can support tackling the virus spread as well as helping in managing data and knowledge related to the pandemic.…”

Resistant, responsive, resilient cities: Urban planning as a means for pandemic prevention

“…[4] Some scholars believe pandemics could (and should) challenge the fundamental aspects of modern cities, IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1122/1/012006 2 such as the continuous growth model based on endless consumption. [7] Others are concerned that the pandemic could be the end of contemporary planning dogmas [8] such as Smart Growth, which focus on high density mixed-use planning and transit-oriented urban development. [9] All this creates an evident need for the New Urban Agenda promoting urban planning approaches to establish safe, healthy, and sustainable cities.…”