COVID and cities – A new demon that points at old problems: How can research help?

Cities in the developing world, just as anywhere else, are seeing the effects of the pandemic. Long lockdowns or stay-at-home orders have forced many to work from home, and many more informal workers to wonder how to make ends meet when they cannot reach the fields they work, or when the streets where they sell their products are empty. Customers have stayed home. Some recent estimates suggest that while in the US about 34% of workers can work from home (Dingel and Neiman, 2020), in developing countries, less than 13% can (Saltiel, 2020). This means that the most vulnerable are left with the impossible decision to stay home and forgo their income or go to work putting their health, and those for whom they care, at risk.

The literature provides vast evidence of the benefits brought by the density found in cities, benefits that can translate into increased productivity and better quality of life (see Behrens et al., 2014 and Duranton and Kerr, 2015 for comprehensive reviews). But the literature is also clear in stressing that along with its benefits, density has downsides or ‘demons’ such as pollution, congestion and crime (Glaeser, 2020). Today, another demon has become evident. It is not a new demon; city dwellers in the early 1900s were familiar with it, but we had forgotten its existence – the invisible demon of health threats.

So how is this demon different from others? How will this change the narrative of how cities should be thinking about development in the long term? I argue that it is not different in most aspects. Instead, it reminds us that planning pays off and that the basic infrastructure needed in cities is urgent. The pandemic has reminded us that inequalities present in cities put the poorest at the highest risk and that being prepared to respond to a crisis, any crisis, requires solid emergency response mechanisms and strong local finances.

The pandemic has put the spotlight on longstanding challenges of deep inequalities. To address them, cities must think about ways to improve efficiency in the use of water resources, strengthen interjurisdictional coordination to exploit economies of scale, and think about supporting the poorest with well-targeted subsidies when needed. The call to address these long-lasting challenges is now harder to ignore. The urgency to address them today has been amplified by recent events.

Limited access to basic service provision has only exacerbated the challenges posed by the pandemic in cities of the developing world. In Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania, about two-thirds of households share their toilet; in Nairobi, Kenya, only 36% of informal settlement residents have access to water in their homes (Lall et al., 2017). Some cities have found effective albeit temporal solutions to respond to the emergency. In Rwanda, the city of Kigali has installed portable hand-washing stations at bus stops, restaurants, banks, and other public spaces (https://www.theigc.org/blog/rwandas-response-to-covid-19-and-future-challenges/). These responses are much needed to tackle the immediate needs of citizens. But this crisis has only stressed how important it is to close the gap in access to basic services in cities.

Similarly, lack of coordinated land use and infrastructure planning has led to cities that sprawl, are disorganized, and in many cases, have growing informal areas that lack basic infrastructure and leave many disconnected from opportunities. Today these areas have become high-risk areas, where over-crowding and lack of basic services facilitate the spread of the disease. Recent work suggests that in places like Mumbai, about 20% of the city’s population lives in areas with densities that are too high to allow the minimum per person space required for effective social distancing (Bhardwaj et al., 2020). But this is not specific to the current pandemic. Lack of clean water is a leading cause of diarrhea, which is estimated to cause about 21% of deaths among children under five in developing countries (J-PAL, 2012).

Improving housing conditions in cities can help improve quality of life but also reduce incidence of many diseases. Evidence from a randomized evaluation of a Mexican housing program suggests that in cities, improving floor quality can help reduce the incidence of several intestinal diseases in children (Galiani et al., 2005). If people have decent housing, it is easier to follow social distancing. But land and housing markets in the developing world are plagued with market failures and inefficiencies; lack of transparent information and limited property rights pose serious constraints, limiting housing availability and leaves many living in slums.

Better information, transparent valuation, and clear property rights can help improve availability of serviced land in cities, and through that, improve the functioning of land and housing markets to improve living conditions. In the medium term, investments in areas with slum like conditions can help protect the poorest, giving them better access to services, enhanced connections to opportunities, and better public spaces. Thinking about improving provision of public spaces can help provide dwellers of over-crowded areas with some breathing space in the short term, and in the long term, provide spaces for interaction and recreational activities for healthier and more vibrant communities.

The pandemic has also made it evident that to rapidly respond in a crisis, cities need to have strong finances. As cities need to respond to the current challenges providing temporary services, increasing services in hospitals, and thinking about how to reach students, expenses of local governments are rapidly increasing. At the same time, in response to the challenges of the pandemic and to protect the most vulnerable, cities around the world reacted by deferring payments of tariffs collected for basic services or postponing deadlines for property tax collection, seeing important reductions in their revenues. Cities need to think about new ways to generate their own source revenues, strengthen their finances and find ways to reduce inefficiencies in the use of resources.

Basic services, better planning and city management, good finances – there is nothing new in this. Beyond stressing the urgency to address old challenges, the current pandemic has made it evident that cities face a confluence of risks: cities have been hard hit by the pandemic; given the concentration of people and assets found in cities, exposure to natural hazards is also high; with 2.4 billion people living within 60 miles from the coast and at risk of sea level rise, climate change remains a palpable threat for people in cities; and pollution also causes many premature deaths in urban areas (World Bank, 2019).

Recognizing the confluence of risks and multiplicity of demons is important because it means that only by addressing those old challenges will cities be able to prepare for the next demon they will have to face, whether it takes the form of another pandemic, or increased deaths due to pollution, or more pressing social unrest due to inequalities, or floods that increase as climate change advances.

So what can research do to help cities in the developing world tackle these challenges and prepare for future shocks?

To inform this discussion, evidence is needed in many areas. Policymakers need tools to take informed decisions, so that they know which way to steer the wheel. First, there is need to get better at measuring inequalities within cities, with a view that goes beyond measures of income or consumption. A multidimensional lens that provides evidence of inequalities in access to services, health, education, recreation and open space can help inform investments. Understanding where the most pressing inequalities lie and where pockets prevail can help city leaders start with targeted actions to address the pressing needs of the most vulnerable.

Providing evidence of the costs of doing nothing and ignoring the confluence of challenges can help make the case for investments today that address immediate needs but bring long term benefits to increase resilience and sustainability. This can help city leaders prepare their cities for future shocks and allow them to advocate for resources needed for investments that show short- and long-term benefits. This means better understanding of the costs in the event of a disaster, and the impacts on lives and livelihoods that climate change is likely to have in cities in the short, medium and long term. What lives are at highest risk, how can such risks be mitigated, what livelihoods may disappear, and how can cities transform to become more resilient in both physical and economic terms?

There are also pressing needs for knowledge today. In the short term, cities in the developing world need immediate help to get back on their feet. For that, they need to identify inefficiencies in the use of resources so that they can leverage existing resources and use them more effectively in an environment of stringent capital constraints. Cities also need help in understanding how the pandemic is hitting different groups, and where these groups are located. With limited social safety nets and high levels of informality, reaching the most vulnerable in cities in the developing world is often hard. Finding ways to identify where the poorest are can help cities provide aid where it is most needed. Cities need to better understand the impact of the policies being implemented, and their impacts on various socio-economic groups. Research in the US, Italy, Japan, and some early evidence from the developing world has shown that lockdown measures have varying impacts on the poor, that not everyone can stay home, and that some economic activities have been hit hardest (see Klein et al., 2020; Pepe et al., 2020; and Fraiberger et al., 2020 among others). Anonymized and privacy preserving location data can help policymakers look at the flows within cities and use that to plan safe provision of transport services; a better understanding of how people from different areas mix in places of interest (touristic sites, schools, commercial areas, etc.) can help understand which areas are safer to reopen and where care is needed; identifying areas where many people concentrate during the day can point at the need for investing in expanding public space like parks or widening sidewalks. All this information can help cities in the developing world adjust their health responses and economic recovery strategies on-the-go and learn from this crisis to be better prepared for the next.

Research that can help address longstanding challenges, provide evidence of the costs of ignoring multiple risks or the benefits of tackling them, and build evidence of the (in) effectiveness of the response to the present crisis, can help city leaders manage the daemons they know today, and those that are yet to come.