 Okay, so good afternoon everybody. You are in right this and it's exactly four o'clock. So I will be speaking maybe a few seconds just to allow people to enter the Microsoft Teams room. I can see that we are almost over 100 participants. So maybe I will be eight until we get that number. I hope you are well and safe given the very difficult times we are all living in. And I am super, super happy of having organized this international webinar with such a fantastic panelist and also, you know, with all of you. We have people from South Africa. I can see my friend Dirk. We have people from San Francisco, people from South America, of course, people from London, from Bristol, from UK, from Italy, Milan, Bergamo, throughout all Europe. And again, also people from China. This is a very international crowd. So I can feel the empathy and the energy of people who are really passionate and attached to their places and to try to build a global community of solidarity and of recovery after COVID-19. Okay, so I think now it's probably the time to officially kick off this international webinar on cities and communities beyond COVID-19. So welcome everybody. My name is Alessandro Sancino and I will be the moderator of this webinar. First of all, some housekeeping rules. So I kindly ask you please to mute yourself. And if you can, to take your video camera off, but if you prefer to keep the camera on, please do that. I'm also mentioning that the session is being recorded and will be available to view on YouTube. So I hope that's okay with you. If that's not okay with you, maybe try to turn your camera off and to not speak. In that case, you will not appear. And let me say a few words about the format of the webinar and then a few words about our incredible panel. So we will have a roundtable format basically. So the first speaker will be Professor Robin Hambleton, who has just written a book on cities and communities beyond COVID-19. Then we will have three questions for our political and civil society leaders from Bergamo, Bristol, London and Milan in alphabetical order. But most importantly, we will have quite a few time for your questions. So please do ask your questions on the chat box that will be managed by Michel and Joanna and Kit. So thank you for your support, of course. And then we will have a final close-off in 10 minutes. And I promise you 5.30 p.m. UK time the webinar will finish. But again, a few words to introduce our speakers. So I'm going to introduce before Georgia and Escher. So Georgia is a fantastic local leader, leader of Camden. We all love Camden and so it's a fantastic place. She is also chair of the whole London Council. So we are honoured to have you here and also councillor for Kentish Town Ward. So welcome Georgia and thank you. It's a big privilege. We have Escher. Escher is the deputy mayor in Bristol with responsibilities for communities, public health and equalities. So again, welcome. A big hug from here. And then we have Bruno Ciaccarelli, city councillor in Milan. And I know Bruno since probably 7 years. I was city councillor myself in Milan. And I have to say that among 45 people Bruno was the best, really. So it's my privilege having Bruno here. Giuseppe is the president of... Giuseppe is the co-operatives in Bergamo. In Italy the co-operative sector is probably... Italy is one of the most important countries in terms of importance of the co-operative sector. And Bergamo was the hardest city in Italy and probably in Europe by the first wave of COVID-19. You will all remember maybe the sad images of motorcars full of dead bodies were drive by the army out of Bergamo. So thank you Giuseppe. It's a big privilege. And then we have Robin. Robin is a great source of inspiration for all of us. He's a meritus professor of city leadership at University of West England in Bristol. And there is somebody who has always spoken about the importance of local leadership since a lot of time. So thank you Robin for being a source of inspiration and for speaking about those topics as a pioneer. So I don't want to take further time. So I will start with one question from Robin. We start from you. So in your book you say that COVID-19 mean that there needs to be fundamental change. So let me ask you why if you can share with us why do you believe that? Please. Thank you. Okay. Well first of all Alessandro I want to say thank you to you and your colleagues at the European University for putting this international webinar together. It's fantastic. Thank you for doing that and thank you to the four wonderful speakers we've got today. So I'm really looking forward to a good exchange. I think in responding to your question I think I'd like to make three points. Three fairly concise points. One is about the disaster of COVID-19. I think we do have to face that. Secondly to talk about power relations in our modern societies. And thirdly I'm going to suggest to everyone here that the central challenge we face is to improve governance and in particularly place-based governance. So just to come first then to this disaster that we face. Colleagues in the UK will know that yesterday was the anniversary of our first lockdown. So yesterday there were tributes and vigils around the country to remember the people who've died. I've got the newspaper here. This is a national newspaper and you can see pictures of people putting lights outside their homes to recognize what's happened. Really very upsetting. If I could add to that just a few figures, nobody wants a lot of figures, but I think it's important for us here in Britain and in Italy to note the costs of the pandemic. Just to ever so briefly in the world we had 124 million cases. 2.7 million people have died. 352 people per million. The UK and Italy have suffered particularly badly. So in the UK we have 4.3 million cases. 126,000 people have died in the UK. And that's 1,853 per million. That's a very high rate. It's a very high death rate. Sadly Italy is not a lot better. It's 3.4 million cases, 105,000 deaths and 1,753 per million. So I just wanted to make that point at the beginning Alessandro, before we start to look at solutions and how to address these challenges. It is quite a deep shock. Another thing to say about the evidence and it's come out since I wrote my book even more clearly. The pandemic's revealed shocking inequalities in our societies. And I'm sure all our panellists will want to respond to that. But the central message of my book is not just to recognise the disaster we face, but to look at the possibilities. I think it's true that in communities across the world we've seen an upsurge in community airing, a community spirit, which perhaps gives us some hope. So that's my first point. The second point then is about power relations. And it's developed in the book, but I'll keep it simple. I want to suggest that we do have to look more critically at power relations in our societies. And I'm suggesting there are two kinds of power. This is a bit of a simplification. But if you bear with it, I'm suggesting there is a placeless power in the modern world. So what do I mean by these two words? Power holders make decisions about places and are unconcerned with the impact they are having on those places. Think about globalization in the last 40 years or so. We've expanded the power of multinational companies that move investments around the world to seek profit. They are not concerned really about the impacts on the whole of those decisions on places. And that's why we've got a pandemic. If you look at the causes of why we've got a pandemic, it is about ruthless exploitation of the planet. In a way that's not sensible. So what is other source of power? It's place-based. And here we've got some speakers who will come at this with their real practical experience in a few moments. We've got this great knowledge in localities of the nature of the challenges communities face, which do vary a great deal. And it's possible when we see this happening, we've got my difficulty at the local level to the challenges we face. So I'm suggesting that caring is the key value that we should be guarded by now. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you, Alessandro. So I think the challenge that we now face is not just a public health or an economic challenge. I'm looking now at this challenge of governance. I think sort of cities and societies, localities face four challenges at once. One, the public health pandemic challenge. Two, the economic downturn arising from the pandemic. Three, the dramatic growth of inequality in our societies, including racial inequality. And then, fourthly, of course, the long-standing climate change emergency. So I think effective responses to COVID-19 need to take on those four challenges at once. It is a little bit intimidating, but I do think cities and the examples in the book across the world are doing exactly that. In the book, I developed some ideas about place-based leadership that perhaps can help, at a conceptual level, think about how to do this. And there's a lot of wonderful interaction taking place between localities and cities. When I just make one, perhaps last point before we open up, I'm suggesting there are five realms of leadership in any place. Political leaders elected to serve the population at the ballot box. Secondly, public servants appointed by the state and public agencies to provide and develop public services. Thirdly, the business community. Fourthly, trade unions. And fifthly, community leaders outside the state. I skipped through that very quickly, but there are these realms in most places in my experience, and it's where you get the overlaps between the realms that you can get really creative things happening. So, Sandro, I've skipped through quite a few points fairly quickly there, but I think I wanted just to set the scene in that way and then hand it over back to you to move it on to our local leaders. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Robin, for such a thoughtful overview. So, let me ask now to our four local leaders the first question. So, if you can share with us what you have learned from managing the COVID-19 emergency. And if you can, please share one story, one experience that has challenged you in your city. So, if you don't mind, let me start probably with Bergamo and with Giuseppe, because, again, it's probably the hardest city in Europe. So, Giuseppe, over to you. Thank you. Thank you. It's an honor for me to take a floor here, and thank you very much to invite me for this webinar. It's a very good question. I think the explosion of Demik in Bergamo found us totally unprepared, which brought down the illusion that the whole health system in Lombardy, which in the last 20 years has been strongly focused on, centralized on technologically advanced hospitals, could protect us from any event. The pandemic, on the other hand, proved that whole health care system was indeed a joint with fit of claim. Prevention, basic medicine, local health network have been neglected for more than 20 years. These have prompted both public and private health system operators to focus their investment in hospital services with high technological intensity. But, let me say, with a low content of social care, the culture of assistance and care transformed into a culture of performance, focused on budget. Consequently, home care, work, relational assistance services, prevention and education activities are carried out mainly by the civil society organization, social cooperatives, community foundation, association. During the pandemic, in the first wave in Bergamo, a huge response was organized in that few days with the mobilization of whole local institutions and whole member of civil society. Thanks to the extraordinary export of our mayor, Giorgio Gori, but also with engagement of our social cooperatives, for example. We had made a network of 500 volunteers as being organized who have taken steps to ensure proximity care of our people, also for aging people. And there are two experiences that I can describe as emblematic in this context. The first one is the hospital build of the Bergamo fair. And the second is the two COVID hotels set up by social cooperatives. Both fair hospital and COVID hotel have been founded with the impressive fundraising capacity and large amount of donations that have been made from enterprises, from people, from local journal to local price. We had very, very big donation. And the hospital built in the Bergamo fair by the Alpini Association. Alpini is an organization of former soldiers that made civil protection volunteer for many, many questions. And also the people from Craftmen Association. It's Artigiani in Italian. It was built in two weeks with the participation of 250 people who worked voluntarily for 16,000 hours. Here in this hospital, NGO emergency provide medical services for the people. And this is a very interesting mobilization for civil society. In the second experience, the COVID hotel set up by social cooperative was being the most intensive experience which I am directly involved in the organization on operational management between a group of civil social cooperatives with the two managers of the hotel and the local authority. We are making this COVID hotel transform into a reception and care facility for patients who had to be discharged from the hospital to free up a bed. Because in this week, the last year, hospitals in Bergamo have very, very... explosion by a lot of people. And we needed to free up a bed. And we made this COVID hotel. Our social cooperative designed the first COVID hotel in Europe defining rule procedure and the safety device to manage care performance in a non-medical place. It's a very strong experience. And from March to May 2020, our hotel took care of more 500 people. And so we are free up bed in the hospital and care these people. It's a very big experience for us this one. Thank you for your attention. Sorry for my bad English, but I hope you understand. Yeah, no, no, no, it's perfect. Thank you, Giuseppe. So the key role of civil society for coping with the pandemic alongside public administration and all the limits of performance culture within health systems. Now let's turn over to Escher or Georgia, who would like to go first? I'm happy to go next. Hi. Yeah, hi Escher. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alessandro. And thank you for inviting me today. So we know that the city's effort supporting the economically vulnerable during lockdown has been phenomenal. We know that injustice doesn't affect everyone equally. And while we're all at risk of COVID, there are some people as we know that are far more vulnerable. And the existing inequalities that existed within the city just created the perfect storm for COVID-19. Black, Asian and minority ethnic residents were more likely to live in overcrowded housing, more likely to be exposed to the virus, more likely to die from it. And are most vulnerable to the economic shocks that have been brought about by the closure of different sectors across the economy. Unemployment in the city has increased most in areas of high deprivation, which had one of the higher levels of unemployment even before the pandemic. And digital inclusion amongst young people, older people and migrant communities was another major issue that we had to tackle. But the power of the voluntary and the community sector has been amazing. So we have something called Candu Bristol. It was an online volunteering website. And before the pandemic, it was just bubbling along. You know, you might have had two, 300 people who had signed up to the volunteering website. As soon as we went into lockdown, we advertised the fact that we had the website. And as a result, within, I think it was like 72 hours, we went from a few hundred to nearly 4,000 people across the city signing up to be volunteers, okay? And in total so far, we allocated about 8,223 volunteer activities. We took over 10,000 calls through our Bristol Advice Line. We stood up as infrastructures to support every part of the city. We also stood up 23 community hubs, which were wrapped around many mutual aid support groups. So as you know, lots of different people were, neighbors were just springing up all over the place. And it was really important for us to provide some kind of infrastructure, allow those community, those mutual aid groups to still be flexible and do what they wanted to do. But we also had to make sure that we were protecting the most vulnerable and safeguarding efforts. So in developing the community hub and spoke approach, those mutual aid support groups could connect into kind of key hubs in their local communities and help to support many of the vulnerable people who were shielding, shopping, prescriptions, dog walking. We even have volunteers phoning people who were isolated on a weekly basis just to keep people's spirits up. I mean, like I said, everywhere saw an explosion of mutual aid support groups and volunteers. And we, the city added, we just added another layer of support and resources, including around food and ensuring that nutritious food was also being delivered and cooked meals were being delivered where possible. Our food sector pivoted very quickly to lend their support by providing meals to the homeless and to our NHS care staff. We had restaurants empty their larders and fridges. And I mean even up to four, five-star restaurants. I mean, some of our homeless people were getting some really great meals. I can assure you that they just emptied everything and cooked up meals and distributed across our hotels where many of our homeless community have been housed. We've also, in addition to that, we stood up online resources. We made sure that we had a lot of online resources available, particularly around food. We ensured that we were also making sure that culturally appropriate food was being delivered to many of our different diverse communities across the city. So the infrastructure made sure that we involved refugee women of Bristol on 91 ways, a whole range of volunteers, chefs and community workers just from around the city. It was a real phenomenal effort just to kind of give you an example. The first 10 weeks of lockdown, we distributed 120 tonnes of food through that network, including emergency food projects. Through the 26 community hubs, we produced 221,000 meals and 16,200 food parcels were distributed throughout the city, with nearly half of that food support going to children. So this Herculean effort and this task could not have been successful if we did not have the one city infrastructure that we have. And I'm going to talk about that going forward. But, you know, tackling food insecurity, food poverty is now embedded across our one city plan and all of our key infrastructure city boards and organisations. I was at a meeting yesterday where somebody told me that food is, the theme of food appears in every single one of our key policy, city policy documents. I think about 90 odd times, whether it's climate emergency, whether it's our transport, whether it's our parks and green spaces. I mean, we are now as a result of what's been happening in the city. I'm making sure that the lessons that we are learning are not going to be lost and are very much embedded in the way we as a city are going to build that better and recover. So that's my example. Thank you. Thank you, Asher. Wonderful examples and a lot to think about. Let's now move to Georgia and then to Bruno. So, Georgia, the same question over to you, please. Thank you so much for having me in this conversation. And I think the first thing I think I've learned has been exemplified by the speakers so far, which is the power of local places to respond to their communities. And I think that in the UK, we saw the national response flounder time and time again. So there was a national food distribution programme that we never really saw in our communities and wasn't sensitive to their needs. But every single local council in London and Asher has just said how powerful in Bristol responded with a network of community provision where local voluntary sector community organisations, even businesses came together to ensure that people didn't go hungry. And it was at a local place that we were able to draw on those relationships and that kind of depth of understanding to provide for our community. So the national system ended up wasting a lot of money on centralised solutions that didn't respond to needs and test and trace, which for those outside of the UK was the government tried to set up a new national system to trace the virus. And it has never really worked. And what we've ended up kind of now a year in is a lot of that resources now going down to local authorities. And that works much better because our housing staff, our community staff know their communities have real relationships and are able to work with them in a completely different way. So I think that I hope that what comes out of the pandemic is a real understanding of the importance of local services, which are built on strong relationships with place and are able to move quickly to respond to needs. I think the second thing again builds on what has been said already is the extent of the inequalities exposed by COVID and I think Ashley talked about some of this, the impact we saw of job insecurity, of overcrowding, things that were deeply embedded before the crisis but became a risk to life during the crisis. So we still see that many of our residents will not come forward for a COVID test because they are afraid that if they do they might have to self-isolate for two weeks and they will lose their job because their work is so insecure and that they have so little to fall back on. So we've found that the welfare state that we thought was there to support people hasn't been able to hold people and we've almost ended up in local places with a kind of shadow welfare state in the UK where councils are trying to respond with little bits of funding they have, food support around rent and financial insecurity to respond to almost overwhelming needs but the national system isn't really able to hold and support people but I suppose on a more positive note I think we've also seen the way that in a crisis sometimes barriers are reduced so whether that's data and it's very boring to talk about data but I think one of the big challenges we've seen certainly around vaccination for example is problems around data sharing which means we're not able to reach people in the way we might want to and we've been able to quite quickly create new mechanisms to share data with our voluntary sector and across local councils and the NHS and we've seen services come together in new ways so around rough sleeping we were very concerned about people who were living on the streets already with deep health inequalities and the government kind of set a challenge that we would support everyone to come into some kind of provision and for the first time really made funding available and in Camden we took over a hotel to support people but because we had to do it very quickly we had all of our services in one place so we had a kind of a nurse dealing with some of the health needs we had mental health provision we had substance misuse provision all in this hotel and actually what ended up happening is we were dealing with long-term health inequalities people who'd never gone to a GP before who'd never accessed support suddenly found themselves in a pathway to long-term secure housing and despite all of our efforts previously to join up services we never really managed it so kind of going forward we're now working together with the NHS to plan a long-time service and I won't go on but there's so many different examples of where we've come together across different services and created something more powerful but I think I just finished with just the importance of listening to communities and those relationships and one of our big worries in Camden was we didn't have visibility over children who weren't coming to school and we were really struggling to reach children and some of our early health workers who were kind of there to support families when they're just starting to develop issues and challenges persuaded one of the local businesses to give them a kind of ban from Easter eggs and the team just went door to door handing out Easter eggs and that was the thing that had parents opening the door having a chat because it was a gift, it didn't come with an agenda just to have a chat and talk about some of the challenges they might be facing and then they were able to access support and I think those frontline workers being able to build relationships with people is the kind of most important building block for responding to communities and we need to give more power to local places and people on the frontline. Thank you, George. Such insightful comments from the welfare state again to the power of place and to the role of co-production. Great questions in the chat from John Diamond a great editor of a very important PA public administration journal, Fulvio we will deal with the questions. So now over to Bruno, from Milan. Yeah, thank you, thank you very much. Proud to be here, thanks Alessandro and of course Giuseppe already said that in Italy we faced one of the first and worst stroke from the pandemic, from the virus and in late February our anniversary was one month ago so it's one of the first and we weren't prepared we came at it without a defense and we came to a full stop just a few days after the first stroke and from our side from the side of a public civil servant we have to deal with a new challenge because there's the emergency it is the same also if happening one or a little late that's the emergency you have to deal with a tactical approach you have to try to solve the short term in a short term version and vision but you have also to try to maintain a balance for a long term view for a strategic view because all you have to decide all your decision as an impact not only in the short term but also in the long term and trying to maintain this balance is the real struggle it's the real struggle also now that one year later from that of course what we saw what already has been described very good it happens in Milan we have a tradition we run directly our kitchen for the children in the school we have more than 50,000 meals every day delivered to the school to the children and for many of them this is the only real meal in the day so if you stop everything and if you just tell them to go home and remain home you are not sure that the nutrition is made in their own so we converted our kitchen in order to deliver to the poorest part of the city using our worker and also we had to deal with the mutual to the spontaneous response a very empowering response and try to coordinate in order to be as near to the need as you can be the struggle was also for the education system if you stopped school you have to deal with remote distance learning so we collected 1000 of the notebook and a pad from a great corporation and delivered that home for the people and the children in need this was of course really something that can be seen as a tactical approach on the strategic side we completed the connection for the whole schools in Milan with optical fiber also for the future because you don't know what the future is coming Milan is now a city really different from the past you can see many bikes along the city it's very strange in a city like full of cars like Milan we have one of the highest ratio for number of cars for habitants also because we painted new lane at the side of the carousel street bending the rules bending the rules in order to try to do something different and also we gave temporary permit for bar and restaurant in order to place table outside and now Milan is something more similar to the Ramblas of Barcelona I think for this change but you had to maintain the distance and try to make something for also the private sector now I think that what we learned is the question we learned that what was seen impossible happened now we have to think about the future and think about something also that now can be seen as impossible if we think about the future and this is a really important challenge that we already have just one thing from I'm in charge of the of the commission that is dealing with the planning and development so we deal with architects thinking about architecture and the future and of course the worker from our side was in remote working in Italy we call it smart working but I know it's not it's bad English but let me say our worker from the Milan workforce dealt with the architects online and this was really helpful and more efficient than in the past where we're supposed to go to our buildings with a huge amount of plans, paper and so on while now they can deal for asking permits and try to solve their problems using teams they can share the screen, use the software this is something that we can take from the pandemic and try to put for the future of course and the things about the explosion of the inequalities are of course our main struggle that's the core point and that's what we have to do now of course. Thank you Bruno for your great points. Let me now go to the second question that I'm going to run through our four local leaders but in the meantime again let me say thank you to all those who have written questions, John Wolff Associate Dean at the Open University Professor Richard Callan in San Francisco so I'm going now to ask this question and also to report some of the points raised in the chat box so the question is what do you think cities and communities will be like after COVID-19? And in answering the question please bear in mind some points which have been raised in the chat box about what we have learned from a public administration and governance perspective and now better prepared to cope with emergency was asking Alberto and how is this helpful, this concept of smart city to be better prepared it will be better for post-COVID-19 cities and also something about the role of religious groups which is also related to civil society and the publics of COVID and there was also one question in the meantime about food so we are seeing from Milan the queue of people for getting food parcel increasing and increasing so again which cities are waiting for us in a post-COVID-19 near future so let's now start off from Georgia if you don't mind and then we go back maybe to Giuseppe thank you I think that so much depends on our own actions and policies because I think there's a scenario where cities become even more unequal we're seeing an economic crisis and a poverty crisis which will be as bad and impact as many people I think as the public health crisis and many jobs will take a long time to come back with doubling of unemployment rates and you can see a scenario where some industries bounce back quite quickly for some people they've built up a lot of disposable income during the pandemic they could move to a kind of more hybrid way of working and life could go back to normal quite quickly and then we have the people that we've been discussing during this conversation and if we don't have quite major public policy interventions there is a scenario where those inequalities become deeper and cities become even more divided so I think that we have a real responsibility to try and take the big public conversation we've had about inequality in all of its forms and lead that to real change because I think that having seen what we've seen and particularly some of the race inequality that we've seen in the way that this pandemic has disproportionately impacted different communities I think if we don't address that head on and create change in the level of distrust and anger will be justifiably very high and I think so what does that mean I think if it's that kind of question that everyone wants to say at the moment how do we build back better I think bearing in mind that we also have a climate crisis upon us and the pandemic has shown the importance of green spaces of shopping networks close to home and people have really appreciated that they've appreciated their kind of local place and so you could imagine a scenario where we invest more in 15 minute cities in creating kind of culture and thriving high streets close to people's home we invest in new green jobs there's a massive challenge around in certainly in the UK around the sustainability of our buildings in Camden we've done a study on what it would take for all of the buildings that the council owns which is about a third of my borough to be neutral and it's around 500 million so a massive investment that's about 33,000 homes to just give you a sense so but if we did kind of put significant investment into new green jobs then we can deal with some of the unemployment crisis and move towards these big ambitions we've made about around zero carbon and if we think about what has become a kind of basic need as a result of the last year digital access I think Bruno talked about the importance of digital access it became impossible to access education and services without digital access and yet at the start of the pandemic we in some of our schools 60 percent of children didn't have access to a device at home or is very patchy their parents could only sometimes afford internet access what would it do if that was a right for everyone if access to green space and good quality green space was a right for everyone of housing that meant everybody had enough space rather than the kind of levels of overcrowding we've seen and we've just talked about access to healthy food so and I think the decisions to what cities are like some of them sit in the hands of local leaders and I think there's a huge amount we can do to build new coalitions and to kind of kickstart some of that investment but I think some of it will require kind of national decision makers to invest in a different role for cities and the final thing I'll say is that I think there's sometimes an argument that the city is kind of over that you know people are wanting to go out into the countryside and I still think that that cities are the most sustainable way of living that cities can be places where people thrive and that there is that kind of desire that we see so deeply for connection and collaboration can have a kind of powerful new place in the city of the future but unless we deal with the depth of inequality I think that cities will become increasingly divided and desperate places really Thank you Giorgia Thank you very much Giuseppe Oh thank you, thank you also this question is very important I try to answer but also taking charge of the very interesting question issue from the chat and the first I believe that the pandemic made it clear how important it is for the city to have a social dimension and enable the lifestyle that keep people together and active we need to choose an innovative form of living and moving of the people to extend the service that can be reached in the 15 minutes on working for example city must return more suited to the people than the cars for example in my town is very evident that is a very little town but there is a lot of car there is not space for people to socialize to relationship and we most also rethink the organization of our own for example by providing a way to living that is very feasible according to the different phase of the life and that is designed for example to manage the care at home of non-self sufficient people I think we had learned that new digital technology for example is very important with work can be radically changed work but also schools very radical change but we cannot think the new possibility if we don't think of the space in the home but also in the town in the neighborhood many children don't have space to participate in the school at distance on the remote and so for example we had a project in Bergamo also in the the region of Bergamo to made a digital divide with young people it's very interesting this project it's financing with a big foundation is called the caripelow foundation is very interesting to remove the poor in education for example and for this reason I insist a lot on the role of collective and cooperative form of work as response to the new anonymity or the people suffer for this alone and the digital work and the digital school and so we need to create a new form of city family are fragile many people live alone in Bergamo most of the people live alone or with a single partner or they are a single modern white child to ensure social stability it is essential to invest in a new form of solidarity and collaboration between generation and so I think we for helping people in need we need new form of cooperative from the public and private sector for example there is a question in the chat about the role of community about the city society and elected people in the governance of city very important in Bergamo it is very important the relationship with city society organization and the city governance but for example in a regional level I think we are not learn the importance of the city society it is very important at local level and we are learn the significance of the participation and also relation with religious group there is a question about the role of religious group for Bergamo is very important as you know Bergamo is a region with a very strong relationship with Catholic church and the role of Catholic church is very important for example to collect donation to sustain many of service also the covid hotel that we had made we are cooperate with Caritas Association and so it is very very important the relationship and supporting mutual to made more trust and hope in the people I think is very important lesson that we are learn from this experience is that much of the solution on our ability to be responsible and support each author along with solidarity I believe that pandemic can be felt if people act together and then I think we need to rethink also the political organization because for example in Bergamo not in Italy we often policy maker only consider us when they serve to respond to emergency but same politician and institution national level regional level prove unable to involve us in long term planning we need for a model of social economy based on local community it's necessary for sustainable inclusive future in the last year inequality have increased due to the pandemic and so we need a more inclusive economy and a more inclusive governance to make a model for a community that support the people thank you thank you Giuseppe and this is exactly what Asher is doing in Bristol so thank you and over to you Asher of course I think I was going to say for me I think everyone thought the man was crazy three four years ago when we started to talk about the one city approach and I have to take my hats off to Professor Hamilton because it's his vision that Marvin turned into reality and it works for us in Bristol and I know it can work for you you know it's like what we have done is aligned a new form that created a new form of city governance to sit alongside city government and Marvin our mayor will always say I am not just mayor of the city council I am mayor of the whole city but the issue that we have like you have in Europe is that we cannot if we push, pull something here we don't have control of it over here because a lot of the power is centralised in local government so one thing I am quite jealous about is how in Europe you seem to have a lot more power than we do as city mayors other than the London mayor so what I would say is really that you know our one city approach has enabled us to coordinate an exceptional response to the COVID-19 crisis because it we know that it impacts every single part of the city and so our approach brings together public, private, voluntary civic, faith organisations education sector partners and even communities having just completed a citizens so Asher we cannot hear you now can you hear me now yes, yes, yes did I get switched off probably, probably but go ahead, go ahead, thank you shall I start again on that no, no, no, we have just lost just 10 seconds all of the players in the city are very much a part of the one city approach so everything from population health and well-being the way in which our economy is going to be organised around our communities considerations around the kind of future that the city our children are going to inherit so we know that COVID-19 has highlighted exacerbated the existing challenges but it's also illuminated the interdependencies that between all of the different players in the city so time and time again we know that cities we've proven to be resilient, we can show we can build back collaboratively and creatively and improve the lives of our citizens so the kind of approach that we take promote system change and we have seen that in bucket loads during this year we have been able to work even our partners within the NHS within health they would have taken maybe two, three years to make a policy a reality two weeks, three weeks we were making decisions and getting stuff done and it was like a light bulb moment for everyone in the city to say actually it doesn't need to take us all of this long but because of the systems and the red tape and everything that most of us are caught up in it takes forever to get a policy happening when you're in a crisis you haven't got time you've just got to get it done and guess what it worked because we did it collaboratively even during Covid we had so many different cells everything from mental health domestic violence, homelessness cell and in every one of those cells a representative from each of those organisations and representative groups were part of that and we moved the volunteering community sector have moved from the margin completely into the mainstream because we wouldn't have been able to go recover in the way that we have done without their support so we know that the situation though it remains really serious for us and we appreciate that there still is going to remain a lot of uncertainty and a difficult path ahead for all of us but we know that when you navigate you've got to do it collective have a collective vision and a collective commitment and that is what we have from the city you know we just two weeks ago had a meeting of nearly 400 of our partners across the city we do hold it twice a year and we were looking at the priorities for the city how we build back better and you know in all of our city balls and the themes that we have there's some real kind of work very focused work digital inclusion how are we going to increase new green jobs and introduce them into the economy and those conversations are happening right across the city and but for me what was really important was also how the communities instead of it all just coming top down and us sitting in a room and having the conversation we found a way using the citizens assembly approach to get citizens to actually inform us about some amazing ideas that they came up with so we now have a number of actions I think it's 82 actions across 17 recommendations that came out of the citizens assembly and all of that is being built into is being fed into our economic recovery plan so we're saying it's the whole city that is going to be part of the recovery we can't do this on our own so everyone has a role to play so and it's just how we communicate that vision and ensure that we're bringing the city with us but we're not going to go back to the way how things were we were a very vibrant economically well to do city in terms of our GDPR I think outside of London Bristol contributes the highest amount to the GDPR obviously that's not the case now but we're a very young city we are a very vibrant city we've got a lot going for us and so we feel really really positive about the potential for the future and again we've also seen how even in local communities how people have just pivoted really quickly and just delivering their services in completely different ways so even our funding I've set aside £8 million as recovery funding for the voluntary and community sector and we are working with the sector right this minute to design the criteria for that following some research that we did and I'm happy to share that with you because that research is delivering a new social reality for the voluntary community sector as part of the building back better and to share that with you because it's going to be a real game changer for us not only in Bristol but I think we'd like to say we're going to share it across the country because yeah the sector and the city cannot operate in the way that it did before thank you, thank you Asher we very much look forward to reading that research and I will tell you a little bit more on how we can go forward after this so now over to Bruno and then Robin there are a lot of questions from you and we want to hear from you and please stay with a lot of energy but because we have also some interactive questions for all the people participating in the seminar Bruno? Yes, as has been already said change is fast we have to be prepared we need to react this was true in the past it's true during the pandemic it will be true also also in the future but an independent an independent variable time is something that can change the way in which you take a decision Covid is accelerating some processes that already were in place you know we think about remote working that is tricky this was true in the past is increasing now and opens new way of thinking new inequalities new way in which you have to deal and is shaping our landscape in a different way there is less need for offices you need bigger houses you need something for for the access not all have access to this the importance of public spaces parks co-working spaces gardens you have to think about this when you deal with the city that you have in mind that you are planning in Milan we are thinking about 15 minutes way of living all the service you need should be near to you in a 15 minutes in order to reach them and if you set this rule you have to try to make this happen and is of course a really big challenge but thinking about this you can think about living in the neighborhood and try to restore try to change many many areas that in the past were not so suitable for living you have to live in a distributed way not just the center of the city you have to deal with with this and of course the increase of the environment of the environment is something that we are dealing we are dealing in the past we have accelerated also this in Milan we are thinking about the greener way of living we are investing in the solar energy for the for the transportation system in five years we will have no more gasoline fuel just green energy for all the public transportation it's an investment of more than one billion it's something very huge but it's happening and it will shape the city in a new way and if we think about the opportunity of the remote working and the new way of dealing we also have to deal with something that happened in the past is happening now the increasing problem of the house prices so many students are being expelled from the city younger and a new way of thinking about the housing price has to be take place when you imagine the city for the future we are trying to to rule this particular sector try to distribute and try to lower the gap between what is the affordable solution for a person the real solution and half of the new residents that will be built from now to the Olympic Games that will be held in Milan in 2026 will be under the market price of the houses but really under it's half the market price and this can be done also because we are dealing with the private sector with cooperatives it's something that Giuseppe knows very well and this is some key for a new city that we are shipping and thinking about this is happening here but it's happening of course in the whole Europe and so on at last the role of technology technology is not is not good in itself per se it's something that has to be managed because if you just approach technology for remote workings smart wars, smart city the whole area that this is used it can wider the inequalities something that you have to deal with something that you have to manage of course from your role from the things that you are thinking thank you also for something that has been said cities are a sustainable way of living this is very important because if you think about the countryside the past it's not so intelligible for a person but I'm very, very fond of this it's true I think, it's very, very true and can be true also in the future so thank you Bruno so now I will hand over to Robin a lot of questions for you from Professor Leslie Badre Dame Jane Roberts great questions on how we can embed place-based leadership in UK constitutional settlements and more broadly globally the importance of belonging to a place and the role of place for political leadership and if you can mention a few examples of cities leading on this respect and while you are speaking I'm also inviting the audience to go to the website and now I will give you the mic Robin to www.menti.com and type 36 20 60 68 I'm going to type a message and you will find one question and I will ask you to provide your answer but over to Robin now and I will share the screen to allow you to do this quick participatory exercise Robin we are all here for you now very good to have that participatory mechanism excellent well firstly can I just say thank you to the excellent local leaders that we've heard from it's inspiring I've got four comments to make that I think cover ten of the questions let's try it's a bit ambitious firstly I'd like to thank Matthew Gillings very early on said could we hear about some more inspiring examples to share I think he said try and find some identify some councils that are demonstrating the use power well the first answer is to say well we've had four just now giving us their really helpful insights from their experience but in the book I highlight several cities in other countries and I would just mention three quickly Freiberg Germany Copenhagen in Denmark and Portland Oregon so what we have these very different countries with local arrangements but in all those cases you do have more power than in the UK at the local level and that helps those cities to innovate so I think someone was mentioning in Milan the number of cars in the city in recent years Copenhagen now has more bikes than cars it wasn't always like that in the 1970s I can remember it Copenhagen was just as car clogged as many cities are today but the local political leadership and I think Jane Roberts hinted at the importance of that I think all these stories do stem from wise political leadership pushing forward new ideas and the good news is there's actually hundreds of good examples around the world thank you for that Matthew Rohini asked a question about smart cities is this a useful concept can this help us develop the kinds of innovations we've been talking around today I think my opinion on this might be changing a little bit I think I was very skeptical about technological solutions that often get captured by smart cities concept and I wrote a chapter in my last book arguing that we needed to move away from smart cities towards wise cities in other words it's not enough to gather loads of information about people's behavioural movements and so on we need to have exercise of judgement about what to do and that's where the wisdom comes in and it's not just politicians who can bring that it's obviously a range of leaders but I do think smart cities initiatives are improving and are getting more inclusive certainly than a few years ago my third topic is collaborative governance this has been touched on by quite a few really good points and questions I'm thinking of John Diamond asking about civil society just filling gaps when there's a crisis can we be more collaborative more generally I think Archiso Diana was talking about engaging civil society and I think Dirk Brand talked about some experiences from Cape Town where they're doing that and John Wolf talked about religious groups which are actually very important and we've had a bit more so far but basically my argument would be there is a variety of ways of developing collaborative governance and sparing Asher's blushes I do think the model in Bristol is really quite pioneering because it brings those leaders together from those different realms of leadership into new spaces that then co-create new solutions there's not time now to outline a few but some very simple steps can be taken to break down boundaries but the main thing is to create new spaces within which people can interact so Marvin Reese is very keen to have lots of events and activities outside City Hall there's more to say but I'm conscious of the time I think the last point I wanted to touch on again to be very quick because of time a new constitutional settlement I think Leslie Bud was talking about the importance of that and I think John Paul Hayes was talking about how do we influence actors outside our place the national and international actors and I think this is critical to the success of places that local leaders lead beyond place as well as within place easy to do sorry easy to say not so easy to do but it means actively campaigning to influence national levels of government but also international and the growth of city diplomacy in the last decade is really quite significant in global politics getting a voice at the UN is something that's starting to happen it's gentle steps but unless we alter those power relations that cities and localities are embedded within we will struggle I suppose last point to make on that and just come back to what Jane was saying local leaders are our best place to campaign and lead on these agendas but with their collaborators in the other realms of leadership it comes back to the civic leadership of place not just the political leadership of place I think I just want to make one last comment Alessandro about build back better I found Sir Michael Marmot's ideas very helpful he's been researching and studying in Britain for more than a decade and he's argued only earlier this year that we need to build back fairer in other words build back better isn't enough you have to address the inequality agenda as you develop your new policies I'm sorry if I missed good points out from colleagues I'm sure I have but I really appreciate all the comments that have come in so back to you Alessandro thank you Robin and I don't know if you can see my screen where there are the results of this short survey could you see those so you can see I'm starting from the second question because it is easier so what is in your view the key driver for leading cities to post COVID-19 recovery and we can see social innovation is on the top of your answers local governance and cross local solidarity about cross local solidarity as Bruno was saying technology opens up also the possibility to realize new institutions we are potentially a new movement connecting people again from South Africa, San Francisco, South America China, Milan, London Bristol, Bergamo and many other places so this seems to bring into the idea of quite a collective view of place based leadership but I don't want to speak myself I would like to leave the floor to our wonderful speakers and please keep in sending questions we still have 13 minutes and I want to ask you all and thank you also for sharing important resources on the chat box so please have a look but now I will ask you a very quick question so two short rounds of the table so first a 60 second message from the four cities so Georgia, Giuseppe, Asher and Bruno one message from London Bergamo, Milan and Bristol so let's start from London 60 seconds one message from London to the world one message from London to the world I think that my message from London would be that we are a city of huge amount of wealth is created for the rest of the UK in a global city but we are a place also of deep inequalities where too many children grow up in poverty and so as we move forward I think our mission as a city has to be to address those long time inequalities and as we grow to transform the inequalities in our city thank you Giuseppe and Asher and Bruno Giuseppe 60 seconds from Bergamo ok from Bergamo I think we need a very social innovation to propose three levels of innovation digital translation sustainability and ecological translation without social dimension and inclusion for all people thank you thank you Giuseppe and Asher ok so for us here in Bristol Covid really has demonstrated the limitations of the response that has set up the sovereignty into central government and leaves those of us who are closest to communities really grappling with the uncertainty for us in Bristol it's a message we've been saying we need more devolution of sovereignty of powers and of funding not just to us as local authorities but we want to get that results right down to local communities which allows us to really build partnerships and connect with those who have always been left behind Bruno well we are willing to think about this Covid experience as the past but we should be better than we were in the past this is a commitment for us all and at last in Milan we miss tourists so as long as you can just come and visit because we of course are missing many many people so thank you minutes and I want to ask you now very quick questions and please feel free to use the chat box also to provide ideas so before doing this final round let me say a huge thank you to those who have helped to make this webinar happening so Michel, Joanna, Kit and all the people at the Open University all the students from four universities, Bristol the Open University Bergamo, Milano Bicocca also students from Switzerland and so thank you but one person asked me one challenging question so why are you whole are we doing this and this is a challenging question because it goes back to the idea of using technology and professional management so when we use social networks we are all very much followers of getting likes or other things so let's use these nine remaining minutes to try to do one final exercise that is how can we work together as a community so we have four great local leaders very important professors citizens, students we are a community of ideas, of energies a transnational community so how we can continue to work together after this so let's have this final brainstorming exercise in terms of key actions and I will take the responsibility for keeping alive this community of people I think and this is my last point before opening up the floor and please fill in the chat box for those listening because you are also the leaders so we are all creating leadership not just the speakers but we need to do that for the memory of the civic leaders who have lost life against the fight to COVID-19 we have had a lot of people and giving their lives to save other lives so this is a wonderful lesson and that we are all interdependent embracing a relational existence so how we can continue to work together from Bergamo Bristol, London, Milan and all together what could we do again the final round of table and of course there will be the recordings of these events that will be widely shared Can I just kick off I think one of the things I've really appreciated over the last year particularly in the fact that none of us can actually travel anywhere is that via the use of this technology it has allowed us to connect with so many different leaders and so many different cities from all over the world and the one thing about me is that I really like to look at good practice and many of the initiatives and many things that we do in Bristol I've taken those ideas from like Seattle in Washington in Australia and kind of applied it to Bristol so I'd like us to maybe think about continuing to have sessions like these on specific topics because we are all facing the same challenges and what better way than to sit down with each other or zoom each other and have a conversation and address those issues together Thank you Escher Whoever wants to go for it I try again but I think we need to invest more time and resources to educate the younger generation Many of the politics have out in a lot of rhetoric around the green deal when adults and political decision makers say young people will shape the world I think we need instead that it's time to made an inter-generation responsibility at all level and we need to involve more young for innovate in the town, in the governance we talk a lot about the young but we don't talk an out with together the young for a new vision for made a new form of governance in the city and we need to invest a lot of education and solidarity participation model a new form of economy because we are a lot of mainstream economy we need to grow and the entrepreneur are people that think alone and now we need the new form of think together for the future this is my opinion thank you thank you Giorgio Bruno and then Giorgio I'm quite sure that this meeting is what we should do you're doing very fine in organizing this in trying to exchange also because we are facing the same issue, same problem maybe managing it in managing them in a different way by exchanging and sharing our our experience is something very good so we must keep in touch from our side of course it's an okay it's an enthusiastic okay of course and the struggle is for us all we should be together think together and try to face the challenge we have together that's true in our city that's true in the whole Europe in the whole world thank you Bruno Giorgio and Robin yes can I make what I know you're right up against the time now I think but just one comment that's struck me as you've been talking maybe universities could be doing even more to help deal with some of these challenges I know we've got colleagues from different universities in this discussion I just made two quick points one is I think we've seen a rise in civic engagement by universities in the places where they're located so somewhere like the Polytechnico de Milano is very involved in helping the govern the city in different ways including city planning and so on that's happening in the city of the world now and I think here in Bristol we have two universities very actively involved in the one city which is the most important approach that Asher outlined but I want to push it a bit further could the universities be doing more to help with this international learning scholars hopefully are quite good at information together revealing insights could they be working more actively with their cities on the international collaborative efforts that those cities are undertaking I do think sometimes we miss opportunities because there isn't academic support to help draw out the lessons from the shared experience so maybe there's more to do with that as well thank you thank you Robin I entirely agree with you and Georgia for you the last round of closing from London the most powerful one of the most powerful cities in the world at the forefront of this community of civic leaders we all are and we all could be so thank you also to Dirk, John Wolfe's many comments that we'll take into consideration it's a challenge we have in London so we have 30 free different boroughs of which Camden has won and you said that was chair of London councils and we also have the mayor of London so our big challenge throughout a crisis is how to create shared governance across London and so we've had to do the work really quickly on how we kind of how we work deeply together scale up best practice very quickly and how to create kind of new institutions to do that I think being online has really helped and I think that some of the that kind of that governance that we've created we should be using that better to then connect in with other places I absolutely agree with everything that's been said about the role of universities in Camden we have about eight universities and we've got quite active public collaboration labs where academics work with us to solve challenges and I think that you know we could have a really exciting exchange and dialogue about those issues I think that the the thing I'd say just from a completely selfish personal point of view is as a leader of a place I would love a forum where I work to come together with with leaders in a similar position taking specific challenges and all of us sharing our different ideas and challenges because you know leading a place during a crisis can feel like a lonely job you're kind of managing so many different kind of areas so a kind of private space to really talk through deeply those kind of different challenges and learning would be something that I know that I and my colleagues would welcome so if that's something you guys could convene I think that would be a brilliant contribution to the discussion and I think we always we always it's always so helpful to see different places and how they do things and I think any good local leader is a bit of a magpie picking up ideas from different places testing them in your place and I think the beauty of local government is sometimes it's messiness that there is room for experimentation that some things really don't work and you can stop doing them but you can scale up things that do and it's a new and different model of doing things and it requires almost the green shoots that happening around the world to connect together to become a forest to go through the analogy that really transforms things so thank you Georgia and thank you all it has been a wonderful one hour and half it's exactly 5 30 p.m. and I hope this is the first brick of you know a digital village of civic leaders we all could be civic leaders and go out and try to improve our places so from our side we will be working to keep this community together so thank you for joining us and hopefully more soon take care bye thank you