Redefining City Governance: Towards Rapid Response Open Planning

Global crises such as COVID-19 produce a variety of responses, locally in towns and cities, and nationally from governments. The UK’s approach to ‘lock-down’, ‘testing and tracing’, and ‘social distancing’, as well as its financial stimulus to mitigate the effects of the crisis, reflect the political outlook of the prevailing government as well as the particular conditions that make up nation states – people, finances, and even its institutions. These different components produce highly uneven paths, and while there is much controversy about the optimal course of action, there is consensus that COVID-19 will have long-term repercussions and impact on many aspects of society, that necessitate changes to our daily lives for years to come. In business and management, crises invariably produce innovation spikes with disruptive effects that ultimately benefit society. Schumpeter’s (1934) work on creative destruction notes ‘the gale of destruction during downturns’. While this is certainly the case in business, in which there is a flurry of innovations during a time of much upheaval and contraction, we also argue that this is the case for wider systems of innovation, which we explore here in an urban planning context.