EURA Conversations – Page 3 – EURA

EURA Conversations

Welcome to EURA Conversations

EURA Conversations, a new digital space for international exchange between urban scholars, was created on this website in May 2020. The idea was to provide a democratic arena to share experiences, offer reflections and encourage dialogue within the EURA community not just about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cities, but also to consider how cities and communities in different countries and contexts have responded to this calamity.
As co-editors we have been more than pleased by the responses we have received. By summer 2022 some 46 EURA Conversation contributions, written by urban scholars from 20 different countries, had been posted. See the updated figures here, and browse the blogpost below.

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We look forward to hearing from you.

The co-editors

  • Anna Dąbrowska (University of Warsaw, PL)

  • Robin Hambleton (University of the West of England, UK)

  • Alistair Jones (De Montfort University, UK)

  • Le Anh Long (University of Twente, NL)

  • Ignazio Vinci (University of Palermo, IT)

EURA Conversations is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.

24/05/2021

#25 Public space

Research on public space was already proliferating long before the COVID-19 pandemic started. And so were worries regarding the erosion of its true function as a democratic space accessible to everybody as well as projections of “the end of public space”. Already in the early 1960s, Melvin Webber, of the University of California Berkeley, was forecasting “community without propinquity” and the “nonplace urban realm”, presciently reflecting upon the effects of communic...
10/05/2021

#24 Africa

UN-Habitat estimated that 95% of all COVID cases worldwide are located within urban areas. African cities are historically characterized by unequal spatial patterns and a substantial lack of networked basic infrastructure, making most inhabitants unable to meet their basic needs. Adding the COVID-19 pandemic has quite obviously increased some of the fundamental inequalities characterising African cities. Rapid and unplanned urbanization, the prevalence of informal set...
26/04/2021

#23 Education

In Portugal municipalities are responsible for school infrastructures and staff, whereas teachers are provided by the Ministry of Education. In face of the Covid-19 pandemic, a state of emergency was declared on March 18th, 2020. Schools and universities were closed, and online teaching was enforced, as well as a state program for TV-schooling. It went on for the remaining of the school year, except for the last two grades of high school, whose students returned to sc...
12/04/2021

#22 Greenspace under lockdown

Greenspaces in urban areas are critical for a host of environmental, economic and social reasons. As we saw in the last EURA Conversation, they benefit our mental health, providing space for exercise, rest and relaxation. In the lockdowns that swept the globe in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, neighbourhood green spaces were often the only place it was permissible to visit. During this time, many people, ...
22/03/2021

#21 Mental health

Urbanisation is seen as a solution to the current environmental crisis, yet at the same time the global trend towards urbanisation is having a detrimental effect on our mental health. Young people are particularly affected by mental health concerns, and the situation has worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic. Access to neighbourhood green space has always been especially important for those who don’t regularly move around the city or travel outside of the city, such ...
08/03/2021

#20 Temporary uses 2

As discussed by some, the reconceptualization of temporariness will be among the many post-pandemic challenges to consider. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, a common response has been to mobilize a variety of temporary arrangements as ad hoc physical solutions. From temporary intensive care hospitals built-up in Wuhan and Milan – the latter highly criticized and currently unused – to painted or pop-up markers...
23/02/2021

#19 Temporary uses

Temporary uses were alternatives to conventional and rational planning, but are now recognizable ways to collectively produce and maintain space while claiming rights. As zones of social transitions, they enable individuals with shared values and interests to catalyse change through simple rearrangements and designs. These are often based on the common needs and goals at hand. More remarkable and particularly...
08/02/2021

#18 Distancing

It might be the pessimist geographer in me, or maybe it is because I live in Latin America, but I not only share Filipe Teles’ (Conversation 3) concerns about social distancing becoming the next pandemic, I indeed think this is a very possible path for post COVID-19 cities. At least in this continent, people’s fear of public spaces is already a reality. We have witnessed over the last decades a trend of increasing privatization of urban life. Apparently led by factors...
25/01/2021

#17 Remember Teaching?

As I sit back to reflect upon my teaching experiences over this academic year, I try to count the number of silhouettes I have taught, the number of breakout rooms in which tumbleweed has rolled, and the number of silhouettes who have remained in the virtual classroom long after it has concluded, ignoring requests to leave the room. I remember the halcyon days where the lecture could be a performance as well as...
13/01/2021

#16 Learning from 2020

A few weeks ago, a column in Time magazine was accompanied by an eloquent drawing: in it, a big red X overlapped the number 2020 and, just below, an inscription said ‘The worst year ever’. There are many reasons to recognise that the Time’s statement isn’t without foundation. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, last year 1.8 millions lives were lost across the world. For months, our social life has been cancelled by...
14/12/2020

#15 Media responsibility?

I would like to contribute to this series of EURA Conversations by suggesting that the Covid-19 pandemic has shown how important it is for all of us to give “good” information. Nevertheless, I am not going to tell you about the proliferation of news about the pandemic, ranging from scientific and objective data to images on long ambulance queues in front of hospitals. On the contrary, I would like to offer you...
30/11/2020

#14 Safe or free?

Safety and freedom have always been qualities expected from and connected to cities. In ancient and medieval times, city walls were a symbol of shelter and protection from external threats. They signaled a territory governed under a rule of well-known law. Yet, at the same time, since the development of the ancient polis, citi-zens probably expected more freedom in the urban context than in the rural one. In a city where many of the inhabitants were newcomers, the flair...
16/11/2020

#13 Working together

A previous piece in this series (Conversation 1, Robin Hambleton) has emphasized the role of cities/local governments in responding to the current crisis, while another (Conversation 9, Ivan Tosics) has argued that cities are sometimes not in a position to handle complex and simultaneous crises. The instruments at the disposal of the cities could make a difference. And any discussion about instruments requires...
02/11/2020

#12 Urban uncertainty

More than a century and a half ago, Doctor John Snow uncovered the linkage between cholera and the urban infrastructure by tracking and mapping infections and deaths in London’s Soho, which constituted a milestone of what we call GIS (Geographic Information Systems) today. Nowadays, it is indisputable that Covid-19 is the most mapped disease in history by public administrations, data journalists, and scholars...
20/10/2020
Robin Hambleton Photo for Post 2

#11 Empowering place

Previous contributors to EURA Conversations have drawn attention to the importance of place and place-based action in responding to the Covid-19 calamity. For example, Paula Russell in Conversation 7 surmised that the impressive efforts of local self-organising community groups in Ireland could be generating a new sense of commitment to place. In Conversation 3 Filipe Teles highlights the value of place-based...
05/10/2020
Jacob Norvig Larsen Photo for Post

#10 Opportunity

Evidently, the Covid-19 crisis poses great danger to peoples’ health and to the economy. Nevertheless, just as with any crisis, Covid-19 represents not only disruption but also opportunity. This health crisis has destroyed lives and disrupted the economy. Nonetheless, all of a sudden it also stopped some of the undesirable consequences of the ways we produce, travel, entertain and live our urban lives. Thus, the pandemic poses new perspectives on urban quality of life...
27/07/2020
Iván Tosics Photo for Post

#9 Social crisis

In the opening EURA Conversation #1, Robin Hambleton wrote “Covid-19 discriminates in a brutal way … really hurting the people in society who are already vulnerable.” Yes, the usual statements that ‘everyone is affected’ hide the reality that people face the difficulties from very different positions. Types of employment and housing conditions are key determinants of the ability to maintain income, health and quality of life during the quarantine. While most white-col...
20/07/2020
Sonia Hurtado Photo for Post

#8 Urban regeneration

Along the last months, we have been asking ourselves what changes should take place in the post-COVID city, what themes and approaches we need to put into practice and include in our reflection to emerge stronger from the unprecedented situation that we are facing as European society. Concerning this, urban regeneration emerges as a pertinent response and full of possibilities to face the difficult reality th...