TITLE:
Reflection on Early Lessons for Urban Resilience and Public Health Enhancement during the COVID-19
AUTHORS:
Ali Cheshmehzangi
KEYWORDS:
Urban Resilience, Resilience Enhancement, Pandemic Outbreak, Public Health, COVID-19
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.12 No.10,
October
29,
2020
ABSTRACT: With growing impacts on public health systems and
economies across the world, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, we
need to reflect on some of the early lessons for urban resilience enhancement.
In this paper, a brief discussion is made through several recommendations that
could make our cities more prepared specially in the probable future waves of
this current outbreak or potential spikes in infections or clustered cases. The
experiences from global examples highlighted in this study address what has
worked in the past few months at the spatial levels of communities and cities. The
COVID-19 outbreak highlighted the deficiencies and shortfall across multiple
sectors of the urban systems and enabled us to identify risks, challenges, and pathways to better city management. With regard to
urban resilience enhancement, the negative impacts of the COVID-19
outbreak are assessed to suggest a checklist of what could be done through
early preparedness. The findings are novel in ongoing research related to urban
resilience and public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The early lessons
here reflect on the ongoing situation of this pandemic outbreak, but could
effectually help to enhance the resilience of
our cities and communities, and especially addressing the protection of public
health and societal well-being. The findings contribute to major sectors of
urban resilience, city management, and public health. The recommendations from
this study could be utilised and adapted in any context, allowing for
the consideration of all-inclusive decision-making and much-enhanced planning
processes.