Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

Many cities have been severely impacted by the pandemic due to inadequate access to basic services, healthcare, and adequate accommodation. Lessons from the pandemic can be used to reimagine city design and deploy solutions that can build health, equity and climate resilience. Areas with high deprivation have been hardest hit by COVID and are more susceptible to other emergencies. Steps made pre-pandemic in Rotterdam to improve the region of BoTu, a densely populated area and one of the most deprived in the Netherlands, offers lessons for recovery and renewal from COVID-19:

• Tackle climate change, social and economic challenges and resilience building in one overarching plan due to the crosscutting nature of COVID-19 and its impacts
• Consider partnerships that link multiple services with households such as Go BoTu, a collective comprising doctors, health workers, teachers, local business people, and community workers that help involve local people in city planning and wider resilience measures e.g. workers replacing heating systems with environmentally friendly alternatives in BoTu will be trained to identify households with other needs, such as debt counselling
• Expand the use of green spaces to meet community needs e.g. more sports fields or cycle lanes. Use community capacity for building and renovation work to stimulate the local economy
• Climate change adaptability will depend on greater water absorbance to prevent flooding, consider how the city stores rainwater and how stored water can be used