Post-Covid Cities: A Webinar Series
published on 25 May 2020
A webinar series on urban affairs is already looking at how cities can cope in a post-Covid world. What are the ramifications of Covid-19 on urban development? How has it affected access to health and public services? Just two of the questions debated at the online event, organized by the National Institute for Urban Affairs based in New Delhi, India. It’s in charge of implementing the CITIIS program: City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain, an initiative that has taken on new levels of urgency in the midst of the widening pandemic.
Post-Covid Cities
Reinventing – or at least adapting – our way of life to cope with the coronavirus pandemic: this challenge lay at the center of the webinar, Global Lessons from Urban Responses to Covid-19, held on 21 April.
Organized by the National Institute for Urban Affairs (NIUA), the webinar brought together urban development experts and people from around the world for a conversation on how cities can adapt to a changing environment, limit the risks of exposure to the coronavirus and find ways to cope in the aftermath.
Aimed at vulnerable populations and focused on crisis-response, topics included providing reliable access to services, overcoming gender inequalities, integrating new technology in education systems, and constructing cities that are responsive to their communities' needs and expectations. Some 180 people participated, including experts from France, India and Singapore.
Part of the Path to the Smart City
In response to India’s decades-long urban population explosion, the government launched in 2015 the Smart Cities Mission, a program aimed at improving urbanites’ quality of life by developing innovative and sustainable solutions in more than 100 cities across the country.
In 2016 the initiative gained the support of CITIIS: City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain. Jointly developed by AFD, the National Institute for Urban Affairs and India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, it supports a dozen selected Smart Cities projects.
Find out about more webinars and the series “L3C: Learn to Connect, Collaborate and Co-create.”
This project is carried out with the support of the European Union.
