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Cities: build networks and share plans to emerge stronger from COVID-19

Responses to the pandemic in India’s slums, Brazil’s favelas and Africa’s marketplaces show that networks play a crucial part in making cities more resilient. Let’s enhance and empower them.
  1. Xuemei Bai

    1. Xuemei Bai is a professor of urban environment and human ecology at the Fenner School of Environment & Society at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

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  2. Harini Nagendra

    1. Harini Nagendra is a professor of sustainability at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India.

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  3. Peijun Shi

    1. Peijun Shi is a professor of geography at Beijing Normal University and Qinghai Normal University, China.

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  4. Haiyan Liu

    1. Haiyan Liu is a researcher at Wuhan University and the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, Zhuhai, China.

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Health workers wearing coveralls and masks check the temperature of an elderly woman in the Dharavi slum in Mumbai

Health workers check the temperatures of people in the Dharavi slum in Mumbai, India, as part of coronavirus screening. Credit: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty

Cities are epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic. From Wuhan to Madrid to São Paulo, the scenes have been grim — wards bursting with patients, queues of refrigerated lorries acting as temporary mortuaries, food-bank lines snaking around empty streets. At the same time, people and animals have thronged streets and parks, while carbon emissions and smog levels have plummeted from New Mexico to Delhi.

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Nature 584, 517-520 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02459-2

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