Will Covid-19 make our cities better?

Covid-19 has hit our cities hard. Stores are closing, theater’s and cinemas are shut, and offices are emptying as people either work from home or lose their jobs entirely. In this atmosphere, it’s no surprise that people are leaving the cities in droves.

From Tel Aviv, to London and New York, our urban areas are under pressure in a way we haven’t seen for decades. Can they survive?

ISRAEL21c Editor Nicky Blackburn invited three Israeli experts to a special Zoom webinar to discuss what will happen next. And while they acknowledged that things are going to be challenging in the short term, all agreed that corona could initiate positive changes in urban living.

Our experts were Zippi Brand Frank, the Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo; Alan Aranoff, a partner in AI Architecture and Urban Design; and Prof. Nurit Alfasi, an associate professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Development at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

If you would like to watch our previous webinar discussion with two futurists discussing what will happen in the wake of the corona crisis, click here.