The City in an Era of Cascading Risks: New Insights from the Ground

This book provides unique perspectives into newly changed political and socioeconomic urban landscapes due to COVID-19 in diverse cities and aims to provide ways to improve the resilience of cities using a global perspective, especially in a post-pandemic era.

This book is divided into three sections with seventeen chapters overall. It explores the impacts of the COVID-19 on city planning, building, and maintenance; it considers city resilience and what urban risks cities are facing; and it examines urban development from diverse socioeconomic and political perspectives. The book contains multidisciplinary work by authors from China, African nations (Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria), Canada, Italy, Poland, and France. This manuscript provides a global perspective as cities from Africa, China, as well as some developed countries, such as France and South Korea, were used to collect data and information concerning urban development and risks, past, present, and future responses to COVID-19 as well as any other pandemics and cities’ resilience.

This book is a valuable asset to urban researchers, urban city planners, urban policymakers, public officials, undergraduates, and postgraduates interested in a comprehensive comparison between diverse socioeconomic and political cities with a unique global and post-pandemic perspective in order to improve urban city resilience.

John Zacharias is Chair Professor at the College of Architecture and Landscape at Peking University, Beijing, China where he leads a laboratory investigating urban policy. He is an urban planner by training. He was recruited by China in the Thousand Talents Programme in 2012. His published works can be found in leading journals in the urban planning, environmental psychology, transportation and urban policy fields.

Mr. Claude Meutchehe Ngomsi is the Regional Adviser in charge of Central Africa Region, Mauritania, Guinea and Madagascar as Programme Management Officer at the Regional Office for Africa (since January 2020). He previously served as Human Settlements Officer in charge of Francophone countries in Africa (November 2015-December 2019). He has more 20 years of experience in international urban development, housing, and crime and conflict prevention. He led the formulation of the Rwanda National Urbanisation Policy between 2013 and 2015, and the modernization of the Ouagadougou Municipal Police by establishing the Urban Safety Observatory in Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso (2010 to 2013). He holds a Ph.D. in Urban Geography and Crime Prevention (University of Yaoundé I) and a master’s in Human Geography.

Liqin Zhang is a professor at China’s University of GeoSciences (China), expertizing in land cover change, land use planning and management, as well as tourism plan and management. She received her second Ph.D. of urban geography at the University of Ottawa (Canada), specializing in urban and regional studies, particularly on topics related to urbanization, social ecology, urban land growth and sustainability. Professor Zhang has led and co-led over forty transdisciplinary research and training projects funded from Canada and China. She published many articles and chapters in well-known academic journals and professional books. She works as co-founder and publication chair of ICCCASU (www.icccasu2021.org). She is currently the executive editor-in-chief and founder of Sci-Hall Press, an open access academic publisher (www.sci-hall.com).

Elizabeth Wamuchiru, PhD, is currently a lecturer at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Nairobi, Kenya. She is a trained and experienced urban and regional planner both in the academics and in practice. She holds a degree in Urban and Regional Planning (University of Nairobi); Master degree in Urban and Regional Planning (University of Nairobi); Master degree in Human Settlements (KU Leuven, Belgium); and a PhD in Planning (TU Darmstadt, Germany). Her research interests mainly focus on urban infrastructure systems, mobility studies, community participation, urban housing, informality and inequality debates. Her recent research focus on policy-practice agenda for disability-inclusive urban transport system in Accra and Nairobi; and impacts of the coronavirus pandemic in the Global South.

Dr. Huhua Cao is currently a professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He specializes in urban studies, particularly on topics related to city, population, mobility and environment, from an international perspective. In recent years, Dr. Cao’s research has focused on engaging urban indigenous and ethnic minority peoples in urban contexts. Professor Cao has directed various national and international transdisciplinary research and training projects. He has also written numerous books, articles, chapters and reports while collaborating with academics, professionals, and politicians all over the world. Since 2015, as the founding co-president, Dr. Cao has led a joint initiative with The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat): The International Conference on Canadian, Chinese and African Sustainable Urbanization (ICCCASU). ICCCASU is an international think-tank for sharing the latest research and best practices on sustainable urban development, focusing a triangular dialogue that altogetheraccounts for more than 30 percent of the world’s urban population (www.ICCCASU2020.ORG or www.ICCCASU.ORG).