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Showing all Blog Posts, Publications in Cities That Work
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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...
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Blog post
Urban agriculture: A viable safety net for the urban poor during times of crisis?
One of the most devastating side effects of COVID-19 and the associated national lockdowns is the impact it is having on food access for the poor. Sub-Saharan Africa, with an already fragile food system, where rapid urbanisation and the rise of urban poverty pose substantial challenges to food security and nutrition, is likely to be hit the hardest. A simulation by the IGC...
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Blog post
Behavioural economics of lockdown compliance: In search of lost time and well-behaved neighbours
There are some crucial insights that behavioural economics and surrounding psychological evidence can bring to bear on public policies of a lockdown. Such insights are particularly pertinent to leveraging humans' 'predictable irrationality' in its design. Applying this evidence suggests that, where lockdowns are implemented, it might be better for policymakers to impose...