The climate change and environmental deprivation are an existential threat to any territory in the world. To overcome these challenges, various political agreements have been carried out at regional and global level, such as the European Green Deal or the so-called Green New Deal promoted by local governments around the world.

The context of COVID-19 provides a special opportunity to reflect on what changes and opportunities can a local government promote to bring forward a climate agenda?

In recent years, cities have increasingly incorporated digital and smart innovations to improve citizens’ quality of life. With the emergence of COVID-19 and the establishment of quarantines, digital infrastructure has played a critical role in the local economy’s functioning and the population’s access to essential public goods and services. Is this trend of digital transition, accelerated by the pandemic, an opportunity for the economic recovery of cities?

In recent years, cities have increasingly incorporated digital and smart innovations to improve citizens’ quality of life. With the emergence of COVID-19 and the establishment of quarantines, digital infrastructure has played a critical role in the local economy’s functioning and the population’s access to essential public goods and services. Is this trend of digital transition, accelerated by the pandemic, an opportunity for the economic recovery of cities?

The economic crisis, generated by the Coronavirus, is affecting the planet, with impacts on the national and city economies.This disruptive event comes at a time when in the EU, new environmental policies are underway that aim at the transition to a more sustainable economy. The Green Deal seeks to transform Europe and accelerate the transition to a “clean” and circular economy, climate neutral. Will economic recovery be an opportunity to rethink the prosperity model and build an economy around ecological principles?

At the seminar Transport and Urban Mobility, it was discussed how measures that had been introduced in many cities months before Covid-19, such as bicycle lanes, pedestrianisation of streets, widening of sidewalks or the extension of green areas, in favour of the sustainability of cities, are even more necessary at a time when public spaces must be reconfigured.

In the seminar Public Space and Urban Planning, major international speakers discussed the necessary reconversion of public space due to the measures of social distancing promoted by governments on the occasion of Covid-19.

Over 150 people participated in the first IUC-LAC Open Dialogues webinar session, last May 13th. Titled Rethinking the post-COVID-19 tourist city, the meeting brought together representatives of the private tourism sector in Spain and Italy and the Spanish cities of Malaga and Madrid and the Italian cities of Rome and Genoa, to expose experiences that can contribute to the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias to conduct its own process of reopening tourism.