Beyond the Three-Act Narrative: Other Urban Lives and COVID 19

The dominant discourse of COVID 19 and cities seems to be built around a singular narrative, assuming the crisis has been more or less the same for different places with few variations. Yet this discourse fails to consider other street lives and urban cultures which exist in large parts of the world, and the most vulnerable populations, who are dealing with the hardest aspects of the pandemic. This article examines the lived experiences of women, and residents of the Global South.

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Scorched-Earth Urbanism: Rebuilding After the Australian Bushfires 

Rebuilding will continue into the future, but requires commitment across levels of government to ensure scorched-earth urbanism, which is responsive to Australia’s long-term wellbeing. These initial years of disaster recovery must embed resilience into communities while ensuring cities are not exacerbating the factors that led to their destruction.

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Post-COVID-19 Futures: What does urban tech look like in the post-COVID-19 city?

We can regulate the tech sector in such a way that it must genuinely listen to and serve local communities. That way tech would play one part of a larger effort to address root causes, instead of a status quo which squeezes marginalized folks out of the process of finding solutions to the problems that are reaching a breaking point in cities around the world today.

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Post-COVID-19 Futures: What can history tell us about the future of cities?

Like a living organism, cities have grown, expanded and developed according to their historical context. As history unravelled, so they changed, portraying the feelings and ideologies of the time. In the most recent history, we can look back at the two World Wars as prime examples of the relationship between history and urban development, as they affected citizens and intellectuals alike, leading to pivotal changes in all fields, namely urban planning and development.

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NEW Call for Pitches: Post-COVID-19 Urban Futures Project

Now we’re living through another era-defining crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic. And it, too, will define what our cities will look like in the years ahead. So what exactly will change? In this new Oxford Urbanist series — entitled ‘The Post-COVID-19 Urban Futures’ project — we want to hear from contributors about the future for urban development after COVID-19.

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