Last month, RPA kicked off its first ever virtual Assembly, welcoming speakers, panelists and audience members from around the globe. The 30th Annual Assembly began with a trio of panels - Confronting COVID-19 in our Communities: Perspectives from Around the Region, Nation & World - featuring speakers from Brussels, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Pittsburgh, São Paulo and the tri-state region describing their responses to the worst crisis we’ve faced in generations.
Regional Perspective
Our first Assembly panel focused on the impacts of the pandemic with leaders from community-based organizations around our region. Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, professor of Urban Policy and Health at The New School, Board President at the University of Orange, set the tone as moderator by pointing out that COVID-19 has “ripped apart the world” and exposed how our society has been functioning in both its great and terrible aspects. She led a discussion among the panelists about supporting communities through the crisis, and developing the policy frameworks needed for recovery.
The panelists agreed that the issues we are facing are not new. The virus is only exacerbating inequities that our region has faced for quite some time. Staci Berger, President & CEO of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, described how some communities in New Jersey are still dealing with the impacts of Hurricane Sandy and suggested that solutions to many of our challenges are known – we just need the political will and the funding to follow through. Juanita James, President & CEO of Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, tied COVID-related inequities in housing and education to the place-based policies of exclusionary zoning and historic redlining that created segregated communities with limited resources, forcing residents to now deal with housing, health, and food insecurity issues simultaneously. She stated, “Most essential and frontline workers in Fairfield County can’t afford to live in the communities they work in.”
A key takeaway from the panel was the importance of community groups and their ability to step up during this time to provide direct services. Michelle de la Uz, Executive Director at Fifth Avenue Committee, compared community-based organizations to municipal services and emphasized that we should treat and fund community organizations as critical infrastructure to ensure their services are available when we need them. Pulling from an analogy put forward by Chris Kui of Asian Americans for Equality, she suggested we have fire departments in every community not because fires are happening all the time, but so that when they do we’re able to respond appropriately. “That’s basically what non-profit community based organizations and mutual aid organizations are. We’re really part of the disaster response,” Michelle said.
Sol Marie Alfonoso-Jones, Senior Program Manager at the Long Island Community Foundation, discussed the challenges facing the financially strapped counties in Long Island, like limited access to healthcare and safe, affordable housing. Alfonso-Jones pointed out that two thirds of the people living in the Long Island communities with the highest COVID-19 death rates are Black and Latinx. She called for a regional approach to address our shared challenges, suggesting that RPA’s Fourth Regional Plan be used as a blueprint for creating a more equitable region.
National Perspective
Political leadership gaps have been filled by civic society, and where we’ve seen any political leadership it’s been mostly from Black leaders at the city level.”
Ultimately, good political leadership will be instrumental to ushering in a better normal for all regions of the country. Laura stressed that individuals from civic society, not career-electeds, are filling leadership roles right now. As Black leaders in particular step up to close the leadership gap in Pittsburgh, this could ensure that community members who have historically been left out of the planning process will not be left behind post-COVID. The panelists stressed that community-led organizing can not only ensure protections and assistance for residents, but also ensure the recovery process is inclusively planned.
International Perspective
To complete the first week of Assembly panels, Moses Gates, RPA’s VP of Housing and Neighborhood Planning, moderated the international panel and stressed the need to stay in touch and learn from each other at a time when borders are closed. The panelists described their experiences handling the pandemic in Mumbai, São Paulo and Brussels and highlighted the challenges in urban form and the economy as factors affecting recovery and containment efforts. Both Miguel Bucalem, professor at the Polytechnic School of the Universidade de São Paulo, and Uma Adusumilli, head of regional planning at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, emphasized how the design and lack of infrastructure in informal settlements exacerbates the impacts of COVID-19.
Jill Warren, Co-CEO of the European Cyclist Federation, said, “the stay at home orders have exacerbated the inequalities among men and women. Stay at home has been more harmful for women than men particularly when it comes to juggling child care.” Miguel Gamino, Executive Vice President for Enterprise Partnerships and the Head of Global Cities at Mastercard, stressed that workers who cannot abide by stay-at-home orders or other measures to curb the pandemic will continue to pose a challenge during recovery. Uma noted that daily wage-earning laborers in Mumbai, construction workers, and low-income workers in informal settlements have been displaced, and that their needs were not considered during the economic shutdown. Among this group, trust in government has sank while trust in government has risen among the middle class in Mumbai.
Moving forward, Jill feared going from “lock-down to gridlock” and stressed the importance of reprioritizing streets for pedestrians and bicyclists. Miguel Bucalem and Uma discussed the importance of addressing the situation in slums and prioritizing their transformation with equity front of mind. Miguel Gamino suggested we must think differently and use data-driven insights to understand and develop policies - working collaboratively to ensure we build resilient communities and cities in the aftermath of the pandemic.
There is so much to unpack from these conversations and much more that we did not have time to get to. What is clear – locally, nationally and across the globe – is that inequality is the fundamental challenge we as activists, practitioners and policy-makers need to step up and find solutions for. COVID-19 may have “ripped apart the world” but the problems it has exposed are not new, and we must use this moment as an opportunity to move our institutions and society towards healing and inclusivity if we are going to come back stronger.
