The rise of remote working during the COVID-19 crisis significantly reduced activity in cities’ business districts, renewing policy makers’ interest in turning underused office buildings into much needed residential housing in cities. This creates a unique window of opportunity to shape more sustainable and inclusive urban development.
To further help in that process, we’re launching a new OECD Regional Recovery Platform that will help national and subnational governments track the recovery using internationally comparable subnational data, and support the development of policies to build back better and ultimately bring regions together.
COVID-19 showed us how capable we are of shifting toward a circular economy.
Over the course of the pandemic, the bustling, busy city spaces of the world have – for long periods – lain empty as citizens retreated indoors to shelter from the virus. These empty spaces and closed doors have become a powerful, visible symbol of the impacts of the pandemic, which have been felt keenly by the UK’s eleven “Core Cities” of Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.
Many readers will be familiar with the game SimCity. You play an omnipotent mayor, laying roads, planning infrastructure, and zoning land to grow your city and attract “Sims”, the inhabitants of your marvel creation. With good planning, your city prospers, Sims are happy, and you earn “Simoleons” (SimCity’s currency) to develop your city further. That is, of course, barring the occasional zombie apocalypse.
México es uno de los países más urbanizados de América Latina y la OCDE. Con la población urbana que se ha duplicado en las últimas tres décadas, hoy en día, cuatro de cada cinco mexicanos viven en una ciudad. Las áreas urbanas generan casi el 90% del PIB en México y representan el 83% de la fuerza laboral formal.
