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Event
How to manage urban density post-COVID-19?
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought urgency to the need to understand better the dynamics of urban density and examine how cities can overcome the downsides of density to create productive and livable cities through active policy decisions. This is particularly the case in developing countries that are undergoing rapid urbanisation with limited resources. This online event...
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Blog post
The gateway to carbon pricing? Air pollution policy
Buying carbon is too cheap and easy. 'Gateway tax', focussing on air pollution, could be initial step. Outdoor air pollution causes 4 million deaths a year. When it comes to climate policies, of those available, the economist’s preferred tool tends to be the elusive carbon tax’. Despite notable successes, the implementation of carbon...
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Blog post
Property taxes in a pandemic world
While increasing demands are being placed on cities to address the current crisis and plan for resilience in the future, key sources of city government revenues are drying up. Taxes based on the value of land and/or property offer extraordinary potential for cities in financing urban recovery, but crucial to this is raising tax morale through visible investments in...
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Blog post
Impact of COVID-19 on public transport
Public transport has been hit hard by COVID-19. With ridership significantly down, operators in developing cities will have to face difficult questions for their future viability. The appropriate response must plan for contingencies, but never forget the value of shared transit in the process of economic development. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities across...
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Blog post
Rethinking regulations: Informal settlements in the time of COVID-19
Informal settlements, given their high densities and lacking water and sanitation infrastructure, are potential hotspots for the spread of pandemics like COVID-19. To remedy this, upgrading informal settlements will be essential. However, for long term resilience, we need to tackle the regulatory challenges that keep formal housing prices unattainable for the urban...
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Blog post
Crime and COVID-19: Lessons from Cape Town and Karachi
The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of how vulnerable cities in the global South are to devastation by contagion due to poorly managed population density, resource deprivation, and maladministration. However, there is another epidemic that has been harming these cities for much longer: urban violence. The cities of Cape Town and Karachi, both historically plagued by...
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Blog post
In defence of density
At their core, cities are absences of space between people. You can call it density, closeness, or proximity; it is the opposite of distance. The on-going COVID-19 pandemic has brought this core feature of cities under question. But this criticism paints with a broad brush: what matters are the type of density and the way it is managed. The type of density Density alone...
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Blog post
How clean hands can save lives during the COVID-19 pandemic
Handwashing with soap is the first line of defence against COVID-19. But without active support to improve water, sanitation and hygiene, the world is much more likely to experience prolonged and repeated pandemics. On June 1st, 9-year-old Stephen Wamukota received the Kenyan presidential award for inventing a pedal-operated hand-washing machine. The contraption, fashioned...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Water, sanitation, and hygiene policy in the time of COVID-19
Investing in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) is a no-regret policy for developing countries in the fight against COVID-19. According to numerous studies, for every $1 invested, the return in terms of healthcare savings, reduced time off work, and increased national productivity is between $2-4 for water and $5-9 for sanitation. This is particularly true for...
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Blog post
Empowering our cities to fight the pandemics of the future
Members of the Cities that Work council come together to delineate the critical challenges that need to be addressed to equip our cities to withstand pandemics. Cities accomplish many wonderful things - they enable people to exchange ideas, goods and services, and many other forms of collaboration. However, the fact that they serve as international and national...