Resilience and Well-Being Through the Lens of the Pandemic

“Urban Recoveries” is the inaugural webinar of the series, “Resilience and Well-being through the Lens of the Pandemic,” designed to examine the impact that the global coronavirus pandemic has had on India and the way that the country is responding to COVID-19. The series will address key related issues in areas such as economics, medicine, urbanization and public health. The series of conversations will feature internationally recognized experts, moderated by UNC faculty members, to examine ongoing research about India, the challenges the country faces and the solutions promising a brighter future.

This webinar will be a discussion on how the coronavirus pandemic has brought many changes and challenges in its wake. It has changed how we live and work while calling attention to the worsening inequities across cities and regions. In India, these effects have been profound — brought to light most vividly by the severe impact on migrant and own-account workers at the base of urban labor markets, and significant health and economic stress on informal settlements in cities. This webinar will explore how India’s urban (and linked rural) economies may recover in equitable, effective and creative ways post-pandemic, and what the structure of cities may look like going forward.

The guest speakers will be: Mukta Naik (Fellow, Centre for
Policy Research), Somik Lall (Lead Urban Economist; Global Lead, Territorial Dev., The World Bank), Radhicka Kapoor (Fellow, Indian Council for Research on International Econ. Relations), and Jagan Shah (Senior Infrastructure Adviser, Dept. for Internat. Dev., British High Comm.) This panel will be moderated by Meenu Tewari (Associate Professor, UNC City, and Regional Planning).