Cities play a vital role in local pandemic resilience. While state responses often proved inadequate, community organizations stepped up to address basic needs in low-income areas, sometimes partnering with municipalities. The pandemic’s critical juncture offers transformative potential for cities, and this workshop explores learnings from state and civil society responses at the urban scale, based on preliminary findings from two projects funded by the Urban Studies Foundation’s Pandemics and Cities fund. Participants include community leaders from Cape Town (South Africa) and Cali (Colombia), along with project teams and the City of Cape Town representatives.
