Having seen COVID-19 disrupt the very functioning of cities worldwide, what would we do differently if we built new cities from scratch?

This is the topic of a webinar conference in The Big Rethink series from NewCities, happening today (26 May 2020), at 12.00noon EDT.

Speakers include Greg Clark, global head of future cities and new industries at HSBC; Satish Kamat, president of Sri City near Chennai, India; and Carlo Ratti, director of MIT Senseable City Lab and founding partner of Carlo Ratti Associates.

The host is Sarah Moser, associate fellow, greenfield cities at NewCities.

To sign up, follow this link

Here's the programme description:

Greenfield megaprojects around the globe have the unique and unprecedented opportunity of starting with a blank slate.

Having this freedom enables the synthesis of best practices and bleeding-edge solutions in everything from health to climate resilience to cleantech.

It also raises the question of who will finance and build and benefit from this optimisation — the wealthy who typically inhabit these places or the public?

Speakers will discuss how greenfield city planners are trying to pandemic-proof their projects on the fly and what lessons they’re learning from elsewhere when it comes to reinventing critical infrastructure.

They'll also explore the future trajectory of these developments. Having already been criticised as exclusionary, will COVID-19 provide a new pretext for discrimination? Will global elites flock to new gated communities? Or will governments and investors work together to pilot novel combinations of low-carbon infrastructure, planning for public health, and accessibility?