COVID-19 in Slums & Informal Settlements: Guidelines & Responses
Learn how COVID-19 has impacted the world’s most vulnerable populations, across the Global South, and understand the varied responses and governance issues in self-organized, self-built urban poor communities.
Course Information
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About this Course
The COVID-19 pandemic epitomizes existing vulnerabilities. While multiple international and national guidelines have been released, it remains unclear the extent to which these so-called “best practices” are actually adequate for the particular challenges facing self-organized communities in self-built, urban poor settlements. Without adequate housing, substandard water and sanitation infrastructure, or living with day-to-day informal incomes, is not possible for up to a billion of the world’s population to face the health crisis with social isolation and frequent handwashing.
This course is geared towards those who seek to understand the contrast between top-down and local responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It addresses issues of governance to understand the particular politics that govern urban poor communities and condition the response of governments and other development agents.
Experts from a variety of backgrounds, including academics, community leaders, residents of informal settlements, public officials, NGO workers and others, will share their experience through brief lectures and other resources. Students will have the opportunity to interact with them and share their experience as well.
This course will particularly benefit street-level public officials, community activists, non-profit advocates, settlement residents, as well as local and central government agents working in and with self-organized communities in the Global South. It will enhance their understanding of the current context, and contribute to their preparation for future crises.
Join MIT faculty, practitioners, and a global community of learners to understand the impact of COVID-19 in urban poor communities and how to address the unique set of challenges it presents.
What you'll learn
● The characteristics of self-organized urban poor communities
● The particularities of health issues in informal settlements
● The different sets of COVID-19 guidelines from international and national organizations
● The nature of COVID-19 local responses across the Global South
● The centrality of communities’ organized response in the COVID-19 crisis
Meet your instructors
Caesar McDowell
Professor of Practice of Civic Design
Ceasar McDowell is a Professor of the Practice of Civic Design at MIT and Associate Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He is also Associate Director of the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, and Chair of the Master in City Planning Program within DUSP.
Ceasar teaches on civic and community engagement and the use of social technology to enhance both. His current work is on the design of civic infrastructures and processes to connect the increasingly demographically complex public. He co-hosts the WeWhoEngage a podcast series on civic design. Ceasar brings his deep commitment to the work of building beloved, just and equitable communities that are able to – as his friend Carl Moore says – ”struggle with traditions that bind and the interests that separate in order to build a future that is an equitable improvement on the past.”
