The Nature of Cities (TNOC) is an international platform for transdisciplinary dialogue and urban solutions. It facilitates the sharing of diverse, transformative ideas about cities as ecosystems of people, nature, and infrastructure.
The Post COVID-19 City Challenge
In May we wrote an article to tell you about our first victory: we were among the finalists for The Post COVID-19 City Challenge and now we are returning to the subject because a set of reflections on the ideas and actions generated in The Post-COVID-19 City CoLab Challenge is now available on The Nature of Cities portal.
In January 2021, the Belmont Forum funded international research–innovation consortium, Innovations in Governance for Food, Water, and Energy Nexus (IFWEN), launched The Post COVID-19 City Challenge in collaboration with Close the Loop and MIT’s Pandemic Response CoLabteam to drive multidisciplinary thinking and collaboration around urban design for the Post-COVID-19 city. The CoLab challenged urbanists, innovators, entrepreneurs, artists, activists, researchers, scientists, and various other types of urban actors from around the world to reset our thinking on how sustainable, resilient, liveable, and just cities can be built for urban futures that nurture human-nature relationships.
Humans are social creatures. We like to be among each other and we need to be. Cities grow and thrive on the basis of that reality first and foremost. And cities have brought humanity together in more ways than one. I’d like to continue to see cities be that site of togetherness, and not become places that tear us apart or defeat us. Afterall, the resilience of a city, is human resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder of just how inseparable we all are, and of how critically aware we need to be of our position as a species not outside of nature, but intricately born of it. It needs to dominate our thoughts, our actions, and our design ideas for future cities. This CoLab is one small step towards that goal. Brought to you by all the passionate and wonderful minds who joined us and participated in this initiative, please visit The Post-COVID-19 Story Atlas to find the full collection of ideas.
On this page you can find various reflections on the world of sustainability as well as contributions of Georgia Bertagna (University of Padova) and Colm O’Driscoll (Etifor | Valuin Nature) members of the Green4C team.
Discover all the responses here!
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