Connective Cities :: COVID-19

COVID-19

International exchange of experiences: lessons learned in the Covid-19 crisis

Cities worldwide are still experiencing the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic throughout all their municipal departments. In addition to public health care, municipal services must be maintained during the crisis. Local governments must also ensure their own ability to function properly. Some consequences of the pandemic, such as halting economic development, hit local authorities first. Municipalities are currently having to learn to cope with new situations very fast. But the crisis has also shown how important the resilience of municipalities is: this directly applies to local crisis management and disaster preparedness as well as the need for continually adaptive urban planning and development towards increasing the resilience of cities. The current crisis has shown and proven once again that resilience is an essential capacity of municipalities.

From August to December 2020, the international community of practice for sustainable urban development Connective Cities organised a series of virtual exchange formats on measures, challenges, and solutions to overcome the corona crisis in cooperation with engaged urban practitioners (municipal experts as well as local experts from academia, civil society and business). The series of virtual exchange events targeted German and international urban practitioners working on various aspects of municipal strategies to cope with the COVID-19 crisis. Presentations of good practice examples encouraged the participating stakeholders to exchange ideas.

Virtual Global Exchange "Municipal Response to COVID-19" from 23rd November to 3rd December 2020

Report on the compact two-week exchange within the series of events

During the first week, urban practitioners and experts from different municipalities, the civil society, business and academia, presented a total of 56 Good Practices in 18 sessions and gave insights into their experienced challenges and local solutions. The second week focused on concrete applications with hands-on exercises such as using social media, digital tools, and planning virtual meetings.
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Let’s keep the Virtual Global Exchange alive!

After such an intense serie of Community Events filled with personal story sharing moments we decided to capture Good Practices in a series of 2 documentary movies, 5 podcasts and 10 interviews.

Starting Thursday, 20th of January 2021, we’ll let you know the people behind some of the projects that helped to tackle the COVID-19 crisis in several municipalities around the Globe during 2020 that will raise our hope for 2021.

Videos about Municipal Response to COVID-19

Kiel: Entrepreneurship and Digitalisation

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: Economic response to COVID-19

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?

Hazmieh, Lebanon

Strategic Prepardness and Response Plan Using GIS
The video shows how the city of Hazmieh was enabled to obtain a fully functional Geographic Information System (GIS) and how GIS played the main role in increasing significantly the municipality's yearly income. Now, the strategic preparedness via GIS allowed the immediate planning and execution of an emergency plan against COVID-19...

Beni-Khalled, Tunisia

Beni-Khalled is a city of about 26.000 inhabitants in the North-East of Tunisia. COVID-19 led to an unknown wave of solidarity. For the first time, all association and NGOs there united for a successful funding campaign to equip regional hospitals and healthcare workers with protective equipment and clothing. Young people volunteered to ensure security measures in public areas and to provide food for lock-downed and elderly people…

Amman, Jordan

"The only constant thing is change."
Dr. Mervat Al Muheirat, Deputy City Manager for Health and Agriculture, explains her response plan to COVID-19 for the Jordanian capital and its successful implementation. Amman is home to about 50% of the Jordanian population. In the meantime, most of the restrictions have been gradually lifted.

Hazmieh, Lebanon

Excellent in fighting COVID-19
As a result of the successful measures, there have so far been only nine cases tested positive in this city of approx. 50,000 inhabitants. The recipe for success: a comprehensive but composed communication strategy, 100% compliance of the population with the measures, extensive disinfection measures, and monitoring and tracking of all measures through an innovative GIS-based database according to the latest state of the art.