How can we prepare for and cope with crisis situations in dense urban settings?
It is evident that the current COVID-19 pandemic is causing critical damage in both physical and psychological terms to all fields of life. We are living through hard times, most of us still isolated and fearful in our homes, with little clarity about what a post-COVID-19 reality will look like.
However, despite all the challenges urban settings are facing across the world, many people have gathered their energies to start up solidarity actions and networks to help their communities. In an attempt to narrate community resilience during the COVID-19 emergency, since March, Eutropian has brought these stories of resilience and solidarity to everyone directly to their homes, sharing hopes and inspiration to deal with the present challenges and plan better cities. We do this every week with the Cooperative City in Quarantine public webinars, focusing on various aspects of the crisis. So far, we’ve dealt with topics ranging from community development, food production and distribution, to culture, community centres, tourism, urban commons, education, public space and labour.
If Eutropian had already witnessed the power of social cohesion in overcoming critical events, in the weekly webinars of Cooperative City in Quarantine, colleagues from all over the world have further demonstrated to us the importance of placing social cohesion at the centre of our priorities. Today, we are witnessing the widespread experimentation of social economy strategies that will be key to us collectively overcoming the impending socio-economic crisis that will inevitably result from COVID-19.
The current pandemic is teaching us about urban resilience as a lived reality across different cities
Civil society has been a hotbed of fantastic, swift reactions to the crisis since the initial outbreak of the virus. Civil society actors have often been faster even than governments and municipalities, providing new services and protecting the most vulnerable members of their communities as soon as the crisis hit[1]. We see civil society initiatives being at the core of urban resilience actions.From food production and distribution, to culture, tourism and community centres, we are witnessing the need to reinvent the way we produce, consume and distribute, reconnecting to the local dimension for resources and inspiration. This is a notion that has been floating around for a while now, but the challenge has always somehow only been partially accepted.
