How Global Cities Are Coping With the Pandemic

Social distancing is the word controlling most U.S. urban dwellers' thoughts and actions right now, but cities around the world have additional lessons in pandemic response to share.

1 minute read

March 29, 2020, 9:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Coronavirus and Lime

Vlad Ispas / Shutterstock

Schuyler Null and Hillary Smith identify trends within the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing four themes, with a lot of specific examples included in the source article.

One of the trends listed in the article, restricting access, will come as absolutely zero surprise, but the others probably seem counterintuitive to the stories being told about the urban experience of the pandemic in the United States, namely cities fortifying public transit, providing alternatives to public transit, and providing "radical data transparency."

As an example of offering alternatives to transit, for example, Bogotá expanded its bike network once already, with plans for more.

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