From August 3rd until August 14th, 2020 around 30 urban practitioners from 6 Asian cities came together virtually during the Connective Cities Virtual Planning Workshop to exchange their experiences in the field of Green Urban Infrastructure. The workshop was a follow-up to the dialogue event in Bandung, Indonesia in November 2019 and aimed to further developed existing project ideas. During the workshop the participants were able to reflect on practical examples and to discuss challenges experienced by their peers. This led together with input from financial experts to more structured and concreted action plans.

 
"You should develop your own digital agenda. It always individual to your city."

Gütersloh, Deutschland a paper-based municipality that developed its own digital agenda within three years and moved online and into home offices within very few days.  Henning Schulz, its former mayor, tells us how did they made it in an organized way.

 
"Our technical-scientific way instead of political management was a fundamental approach during this period, and Belo Horizonte owes its good results so far to it."
Bem-vindo to Belo Horizonte, Brasil, a city that communicates to its own citizens and also helps partner cities and organizations worldwide.  Learn how Hugo Salomão França and his team helped to make sense of this unprecedent situation.

 
"Gjilan has some sort of experience with emergency situations because we are a post-conflict country and we are living in a seismic area."
Meet Lutfi Haziri, mayor of Gjilan, Kosovo, that came up with immediate measures to control borders in order to prevent the COVID-19 arrival to his small country.

 
"You should always trust and believe in your own capabilities to combat crisis and raise the resilience of your own city."
Avoid bureaucracy, gather verified urban data and rely on your own strengths - watch through Ahmad Zeyad what it took to reduce infection rates in Amman, Jordan.

"There is a gap between how municipalities and the state provide services and the experiences of people on the ground."

Awande Buthelezi from Johannesburg, South Africa, shows how did he and his NGO handled to know who was in need of essential supplies such as water when there was no existing data about the precise locations.

"We monitored in real-time the locations where the virus was spreading, both the people in confinement and the infected ones, to intensify desinfections operations."
Hazmieh, Lebanon, a city located at the entrance of Beirut. Rami Kanaan, a proud Lebanese, told us how to control infection chains to prevent the virus from spreading and how can police and ambulances profit from this.

 
"Indigenous knowledge and skills and the ability of communities to respond to crisis is something that has been neglected." Nairobi, Kenia, a troubled place that woke up Daniel Onyango and friends’ creativity to rose awareness for the safety measures. He lives in one of the biggest informal settlement of the capital where people did not understand the magnitude of COVID-19.

 
"I think as city councillors we need to think as social entrepreneurs."
Beni Khalled, Tunisia, a city famous for its citrus farms, is home of Leila Ben Gacem, social entrepreneur and as elected city councillor head of the Finance Committee. The brave woman worked late hours throughout the first lockdown in order to coordinate volunteers, health companies and municipal activities through social entrepreneurship skills.

 
Tirana, Albania, is a potential hub for StartUp enthusiasts with a young and multi-lingual population. Learn through Faola Hodaj, Director of Innovation at Municipality of Tirana, how did the municipality reflect this innovative spirit through its services and response to the pandemic.

 
"The social compact is critical in order to respond quickly and appropriately to future pandemics." Economic modelling to better understand crisis scenarios; mapping vulnerable groups for targeted help. Dr. Lardo Stander from Pretoria, South Africa, told us how did they deal with the South African slums’ economic and housing problems during lockdown.

 
"We learned to use what we have." Listen to Nadia Odjo, a SmartSchooling natural from Jacmel, Haiti, and founder of the B.R.I.T.E Initiative. She implemented distance learning at her school by her own besides a disconnected community that even had problems setting up e-mail accounts.

 
Learn through Magnolia Vega, communication officer in a district of Bogotá, how to keep informed 7 million citizens during the pandemics and how to orchestrate between 60 communication officers - in a very personal effort - to unify their message under one brand.

 
Welcome to Berlin, where thousands of artists lost their stages because of lockdown. Learn how Armin Berger got support from the senator of culture and how good ideas emerged during breakfast to fill Berlin with new life: Berlin(a)Live

  
Meet Salih Mahmod, a young Iraqi that rebuilt his Mosul Space entirely after ISIS left Mosul and knew what to do after the hospitals in his city lost their medical supplies in the middle of the pandemic.

 
We traveled to Kiel, where we captured deep insights from a city that, as a digital champion, had to adapt quickly. How do you keep your StartUp community alive if people cannot meet personally?

 
Weimar, a city that attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world every year. Watch how did the local city guides, hoteliers and small shop owners react to the lockdown? And what did the local authorities do?