Reshaping our urban future: Lessons learnt from COVID-19

The year 2020 has given human beings the chance to self-reflect on what the universe has revealed. We had never thought of facing such a crisis in the history of our generation. COVID-19 has impacted millions of people worldwide, not only on health but also on economic and social aspects. It has changed the way people live, think and interact amongst themselves. It has caused new adaptive habits, such as working from home, on-line schools or education system, and so on.

The Chinese characters for the word ‘crisis’ mean danger and opportunity. Despite the challenges we faced caused by COVID-19, the pandemic allowed us to reshape the future we want. COVID-19 provided us the moment to push sustainable development across the finish line. The blue sky that we managed to see and clean air that we were able to breathe in our cities during this pandemic due to less private cars, fewer motorcycles on the streets and absence of industrial activities polluting the cities could be the bright phenomena that it is possible and feasible to transform our lives into a sustainable future. This is the time to act!

Local government' ability to provide and deliver the COVID-19 pandemic is varied. Local governments that have a clear mandate and authority can respond to the crisis effectively

Local Governments: Frontrunner in COVID-19 responses

Local governments, the administrative body closest to the people, are the frontrunner in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have a crucial role in interpreting national orders during the crisis to be easily understood by ordinary people. They also play a significant part in delivering effective safety net programmes provided by the central governments. It is believed that local governments could perform a key role as the forefront agency of the post-COVID-19 recovery effort.
Local governments’ ability to provide and deliver local services to the community during the COVID-19 pandemic is varied. Local governments that have a clear mandate and authority can respond to the crisis effectively. The City of Jeonju, capital of North Jeolla Province in South Korea, came up with its initiative of providing a total of 200 landlords of 500 businesses with a lowered rental fee of around 5-20 per cent for at least three months. This initiative was mentioned by the President of South Korea and scaled up throughout the country. Jeonju is also the first local government in South Korea to provide its vulnerable citizens with basic disaster income to help fight the COVID-19 outbreak and 50,000 people in need were granted such cash support. Efforts made by local governments in responding to COVID-19 and recovering from its impacts were enormous. The effort to flatten the curve and reduce the impacts by local governments can be categorised into three aspects: 1) Developing communication tools to ensure the application of health protocol by people at the local level, 2) Improving health facilities and services, and 3) Minimising the impact on the local economy, social, environmental, and education sectors. The initiatives from various cities and local governments in Asia have been included in the ‘Brief Guide for and Lessons Learnt from Local Governments in Asia on COVID-19’ that was released by the United Cities and Local Governments Asia Pacific (UCLG ASPAC) in
March 2020.
UCLG ASPAC has captured tremendous initiatives undertaken by local governments in the region and organised a series of webshare sessions to transfer them to other local governments and partners. The initiatives have triggered knowledge transfer and provided strong motivation that “We, local governments, are not alone in this crisis.” The crisis has also created the feeling of solidarity as shown from donations that UCLG ASPAC facilitated. As expressed by Xi’an City in its donation to Iriga, the Philippines, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” UCLG ASPAC facilitated the donations from Xi’an City, Haikou City, Zhengzhou City, Yiwu City and Guangzhou to UCLG ASPAC members in Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Pakistan.

It is time to reshape our urban future

There are incredible lessons learnt that cities and local governments can take, based on experiences we faced in the past year. Potential losers and winners will depend on how quickly we can adapt to the new normal, a condition we will live with, as result of the existence of COVID-19. The future of living in harmony with nature requires a new design of our cities – the pandemic’s epicentre. There have been several initiatives to improve the local economy such as discounting taxations and launching stimulus packages for companies, having and arranging digital platforms for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), improving community resilience on the food supply chain, and developing strategies on economic sectors impacted by COVID-19 such as virtual tourism and domestic tourism promotion. These are possible as local governments managed to adjust quickly to the needs of the citizens. Others include optimal usage of public assets and new collaboration between local governments and private sectors, such as hotels, to treat the COVID-19 positive cases.
Reform on the local governance system is needed to reshape our future.Horizontal and vertical coordination of different tiers of local governments with central governments on data synchronization, for example, can be seen as one of the effective ways of optimising the safety net programmes and other available support to the targeted community.
It is time to reshape our urban future. How our cities should be redesigned should consider the ecosystem, 10- or 15-minute accessibility for the communities and sufficient public spaces, including good quality of roads with public transport as priorities. UCLG ASPAC, in cooperation with Daejeon Metropolitan City and Daejeon Metropolitan Express Transit Corp (DJET), released a publication on ‘Brief Countermeasures Report of Public Transport during COVID-19.’ This publication can be a useful reference for designing public transport with digital transformation technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AIs) and Internet of Things (IoT).
The newly redesigned cities allow equality, equity and security for all. Below is my vision – 5 Zeroes:

• First zero is zero inequalities. I envision a human-oriented Asia-Pacific that considers the rights of all, including women, children and youth.
• Second zero is zero poverty. A society where everyone has a home and food on their tables is something that we all want to see. No one should be living in slums and on a hand-to-mouth existence.
• Third zero is zero crime, violence, disaster and accident. We want a safe environment, especially for women, children and less privileged people, free from conflict and disaster risk. We want peace and stability.
• Fourth zero is zero greenhouse gas emissions and zero pollution. Every human being, in fact, every living being, has the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in a clean environment.
• Fifth and last zero is zero intolerance and zero discrimination. Even with different faiths and beliefs, we must show respect to earn respect.
  
  This vision is possible and feasible!

Let’s go together towards a better future. As the famous proverb says, ‘If we want to go fast, we go alone, but if we want to go far, we go together’.