The global pandemic has exacerbated a wider social and economic crisis, which has fundamentally altered societies everywhere. The reverberations will be felt in cities for years to come. The measures taken to contain COVID-19 are estimated to have wiped out 400 million full-time jobs in the second quarter of 2020, resulting in a 14 percent contraction in working hours compared with pre-crisis levels (at the end of 2019). Furthermore, as a consequence of the pandemic, an estimated 100 million people living in cities are likely to fall into poverty, with as many as 71 million falling into extreme poverty.
The pandemic has exposed the stark inequality in cities and in different parts of the world. COVID-19 has not affected people equally. It has visited greater destruction on those least able to defend themselves against it, often low-income communities, isolated elderly people, communities of colour, or those living in informal settlements. Systemic racism, sexism, inequality, and unfair access to basic healthcare are all driven by the same institutional and economic failures. What’s more, these drivers of social injustice are the same as those behind pandemics and environmental breakdown. Emerging from COVID-19 in a just and sustainable way requires a change to the systemic, underlying causes of those failures.