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In This Update:
Zimbabwe Migrant Women Face Squalid Living Conditions in Johannesburg
Bridging the Digital Divide in a Locked Down Lagos
Official Numbers Vastly Under-count Coronavirus Cases in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas
World Bank Study Suggests Income-Level Shapes Response to Stay-at-Home Orders
A Sustainable, Smart City in China
The World Urban Campaign Convenes First Assembly Meeting
This Week in Photos
In the News And Around the Web
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Zimbabwe Migrant Women Face Squalid Living Conditions in Johannesburg
In Johannesburg, hundreds of single Zimbabwean migrant and refugee women live in overcrowded, derelict "dark buildings." Dark buildings are properties taken over by people pretending to be landlords who then rent out single rooms and will cut off electricity when rent is unpaid. The city says that it is investigating the rogue landlords while also encouraging the rightful owners to come forward, renovate the property, and enter a leasing agreement with the residents. Nonetheless, residents are frequently evicted. One resident explained that despite the threat of evictions, "The dark buildings provide. It is cheap and better than living on the streets. It gives us shelter."
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Bridging the Digital Divide in Locked Down Lagos
The Lagos education ministry has launched a program to bridge the digital divide its children are facing during lockdown. Since schools closed in March, the city government set up television and radio programming for students' education and some individual schools made online learning available. Despite their efforts, the pandemic has exacerbated the learning gap in Lagos as access to electricity and data remains a challenge for many children.
The city has now distributed smartphones with data and an app with curriculum, video, audio, and chat-based classes to 20,000 students and plans to expand the program to cover 300,000 students. The city admits this number is not enough, but hopes that investments will making widening the program possible.
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Official Numbers Vastly Under-count Coronavirus Cases in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas
A new study suggests that the COVID-19 infection rate in the favelas of Brazil could be 30 times higher than the official count. Approximately 1.5 million people live in the overcrowded and unsanitary favelas where it is difficult to socially distance, hand wash, and access health services. The department of the mayor in Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics conducted 3,210 rapid tests in six of the city's densest areas. In the Cidade de Deus favela, 28% of tests returned positive and in Rochina, Brazil's largest favela home to 100,000, nearly 25% of those tested were infected. The country has confirmed 53,000 coronavirus-related deaths and 1.2 million cases, the second highest country numbers worldwide.
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Urban India and Pandemic Preparedness
At Urbanet, Soumyadip Chattopadhyay, Simi Mehta, and Arjun Kumar explore what social and spatial inequalities in housing and access to basic services in Indian slums means for contagious diseases. The authors explain gaps in services such as sanitation and adequate housing make disease mitigation difficult. The authors say poor financial health, lack of planning, weak institutional capacities, and the absence of governance structures are responsible for the gap in urban services in India. In the short-term, they urge governments to pursue aggressive and affordable testing and tracing, deliver door-to-door drinking water, and provide portable toilet facilities. In the long-term, they stress authorities must identify gaps in service delivery and their socioeconomic causes in order to address those gaps.
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World Bank Study Suggests Income-Level Effects Response to Stay-at-Home Orders
A new World Bank study of cities in developing countries suggests that low-income residents respond differently to stay-at-home orders than higher-income residents. Using mobile-app generated GPS location data, the study found that users in the wealthiest 10% of neighborhoods in Jakarta stayed home 20% more hours than usual as compared to the poorest 10% of neighborhoods where users stayed home 11% more. High-wealth users also reduced their visits to other neighborhoods by 25% as compared to 17% by low wealth users. The data supports ongoing anecdotal evidence that poorer residents who rely on day-to-day work to purchase food are less able to follow lockdown restrictions. This data can spur evidence-based policy in order to best assist poorer residents during the pandemic.
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A Sustainable, Smart City in China
In China, technology corporation Tencent is planning construction of a smart city later this year that aims to use technology to better plan cities for people and the environment. Net City, planned as a 21.5 million square foot neighborhood in the Chinese city Shenzhen, will prioritize reducing car use, environmental conservation, and accessibility to public spaces. Some planners say Net City will be a model for post-pandemic city building. But others point out that the concerns about data privacy and surveillance present in other Chinese smart cities face Tencent as well. Public policy researcher Xu Chengwei at the Singapore Management University believes: "China's smart cities are [driven]...by political and technological ambition."
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The World Urban Campaign Convenes First Assembly Meeting
The UN-Habitat World Urban Campaign convened its first Assembly Meeting this week where partners recommitted to advance the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals. The WUC, which last met in Abu Dhabi at the 10th World Urban Forum, is an advocacy and partnership platform that seeks to advance the NUA and to bring about positive urban change. IHC Global President/CEO Judith Hermanson participated in the Assembly which reviewed the new WUC governance structure and laid out a roadmap going forward. IHC Global has been a Lead Partner in WUC since 2016.
Read the press release here.
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This Week in Photos
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Manila Under Lockdown: A priest in Manila is helping to distribute food and face masks in slums under lockdown.
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In The News and Around the Web
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Monsoon Season After Lockdown: Coronavirus has left Mumbai unprepared for monsoon season.
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Chinese City Launches Domestic Violence Database:
The city of Yiwu is piloting a program that will allow residents to check whether their partner has a history of domestic abuse before getting married.
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Participatory Budgeting and Policing in American Cities:
In America, calls to defund the police could be a part of a movement of participatory budgeting in cities.
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The Rochina favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (
Silvia Izquierdo/AP)
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