Better Access to Urban Opportunities

"The pandemic has created opportunities to rethink urban spaces and improve people’s ability to move around cities and thrive. As places to connect people with opportunities, resources, goods, and services, cities can be used to define the pathway to a successful recovery and move away from business-as-usual urban development. National governments have a window of opportunity to put an inclusive, compact, connected, and clean urban vision into national recovery strategies and make cities more resilient to future shocks."

"This new report by researchers at LSE Cities and the OECD and produced for the Coalition for Urban Transitions, analyses COVID-19 recovery spending across nine countries – China, Colombia, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States – and makes recommendations to national governments to boost recovery and accelerate progress towards low-carbon, accessible and inclusive cities."

The paper sets out six priorities for national governments:

1. Realign national transport policies and budgets
2. Reform housing and land use policy
3. Support the trend towards hyper-localisation and the 15-minute neighbourhood
4. Facilitate the growth of new urban mobility options and last-mile connectivity
5. Encourage cities to reallocate road space and engage in tactical urbanism
6. Provide new finance for metropolitan-wide transport systems.