Urban Environments & COVID-19

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This article discusses the importance of attending to urban inequalities that underpin the crisis. By understanding the fundamental inclusive development opportunity we can ensure urban expertise, and cities, are at the heart of the global response.

This document published by UN-Habitat arose from a virtual meeting to discuss city responses to the pandemic.

COVID-19 had a detrimental impact on urban population health. The restrictive measures introduced during lockdowns led to a re-evaluation of proximity scale bringing attention to public transport and mobility and the quality and distribution of open public spaces. This piece explores the relationship between urban environment design and health relating to constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2021. This analysis of the contributions led to an identification of six urban topics being relevant in terms of the promotion of citizen public health...

With an estimated 90 percent of all reported COVID-19 cases, urban areas became the epicentre of the pandemic. COVID-19 highlighted the critical role local governments play as front-line responders in crisis response, recovery and rebuilding.

This article provides an example from Sri Lanka of combatting COVID-19.

Despite the many challenges we are seeing to urban environments as we continue to feel the effects of COVID-19, two scholars who study cities explained in 2021 why they believe urban areas endure situations like this.

This paper, from April 2020, describes how UN-Habitat set out to help the world's cities respond to COVID-19.

In cooperation with the World Economic Forum and its Engineering and Construction Industry Action Group, BCG developed a framework for developing effective stimulus plans for infrastructure.