As soon as the
COVID-19 began the City of Turku started extraordinary measures to mitigate
impacts especially on the elderly who were essentially isolated and families
with school-aged or younger children. In a few days we started a service
delivering food for the elderly and others in need. As the need for personnel in culture services decreased
rapidly we re-allocated resources to ensure social contact with the elderly and
thus could also coordinate service needs that would otherwise remain unseen.
As teaching in schools was transformed into remote teaching almost overnight,
we set a special emphasis on individual contact and keeping hold of all
children in school or daycare. It was possible for children to retrieve their
school lunches from their respective schools, and this also strengthened the
connection during remote teaching. During school lockdown the number of “lost
children” stayed minimal in Turku.
How is your city ensuring that the
COVID-19’s recovery is also a green recovery that meets climate change goals?
It can already be seen
that the financial effects of COVID-19 can hinder the city’s possibilities to
invest in e.g. public transport projects and sustainable urban development, and
this would have negative effects on green recovery. All in all, if we are able
to continue our investment roadmap or even speed it up, recovery on Turku’s
part would be a green one.
What long-term investments are required
to increase your city’s preparedness to future pandemics and boost its
resilience to shocks?
We
have learned that in time of crisis cities are very agile actors. In a few days
we turned our services into something they had never been before. I think that
for instance in social and health services we need to hasten the investments in
our IT-based work modes that we would in all cases be doing to increase
preparedness.
At the moment it seems that the biggest impact from COVID-19 is the dramatic
decrease in the city’s revenue. It is not yet clear how the economic situation
will develop and how SMEs and bigger actors will cope in the end.
In this
regard I feel that what the city can do in the long term is to even further
invest in resilient, multifaceted and attractive urban development.
Partnerships and collaborative efforts
are critical to support local leaders in the COVID-19 recovery. What do
you expect from the cooperation with national and European actors?
I think the City of
Turku is known from its strong networks and the will to promote collaboration.
So is the case in COVID-19 recovery also. The pandemic has had
drastic impacts in urban areas and this is something I would hope to be
acknowledged on national and European levels.
Looking forward, I
hope to see stronger cooperation between cities, city networks and national and
European actors.
It would be worthwhile to once again bring up the concept of
subsidiarity and to promote and acknowledge the agility of local actors.
