ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has stressed the condition of radical uncertainty that increasingly characterises our times and compels cities to learn new ways to cope with unexpected global urban challenges. The volume proposes preparedness as a key concept in urban geography, planning, and policy, inviting international scholars to discuss its pros and cons. Firstly, it builds a critical theoretical framework around the concept of preparedness in relation to the COVID-19 effects and other interconnected crises. Then, the authors put at work and redefine preparedness, starting from worldwide surveys, research experiences, public discourses and spatial strategies analysis in Europe and, more extensively, in Italy. Finally, the closing section goes beyond the view of preparedness as an emergency tool, proposing to interpret it more broadly as a technology supporting a sustainable urban transition. The book mainly targets academics in urban planning, policy, and geography. However, the prominence of the topic of preparedness makes the volume an essential reading not only within social sciences but further in engineering, basic sciences, and life science. In addition, the book provides directions to practitioners and civic leaders in supporting cities and regions to prepare themselves in the face of pandemics and unpredictable socio-environmental shocks. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Simonetta Armondi, Alessandro Balducci, Martina Bovo and Beatrice Galimberti;individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
How has the impact of the coronavirus been inscribed in the bearing of the dominant pattern of urbanization that followed the last global financial crisis? The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility of planetary urbanization, which nonetheless seems to have already ushered in a new phase of urban economic recomposition and restructuring. The article points out that the spatial dimension of the pandemic is an important research ground for urban and regional studies and for the definition of policy and planning tools because it calls attention to the rethinking of traditional institutional, economic, political boundaries, and powers. These considerations have deep echoes on possible actions, not only to cope with the emergency but to progressively reinvent some urbanization trajectories at the urban and regional scale. Copyright © FrancoAngeli.
ABSTRACT
This contribution offers an interview with two anthropologists: Frédéric Keck, director of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (cnrs-Collège de Franceehess) and Andrew Lakoff, professor of Sociology and Communication (University of Southern California). They have long wondered about the relationship between public action, emergency and the construction of biosecurity devices, focusing on the construction of preparedness. It seems a perspective of great interest to understand the limits and possibilities of taking a preparedness approach in the fields of urban planning and policy. © 2021 FrancoAngeli. All rights reserved.