Two new platforms have come online to support quick learning and adaptation at the municipal and community levels during COVID-19.
?We designed these easy-to-use tools to give people opportunities to highlight what?s happening in cities across the country, shorten learning curves, and accelerate the adoption of effective local solutions,? says Mary Rowe, CEO and President of the Canadian Urban Institute, the national non-profit that launched both sites on March 26, 2020.
CityWatch Canada features daily updates on emergency measures put in place by local governments across Canada. The site currently features 62 of Canada?s larger municipalities, with CUI staff and volunteers adding more each day.
CityShare Canada is a crowdsourced site that aggregates the smart and imaginative responses that groups, organizations, neighbourhoods and citizens are coming up with across the country. There are already hundreds of examples posted to the site, and everyone is invited to actively submit more. Initiatives range from the opening of public washrooms to vulnerable community members in Waterloo, to the delivery of food and wine by drag queens from a LGBTQ+ bar in Kelowna, BC. The two platforms are themselves the result of quick collaboration with a cross-country network of CUI resiliency partners.
?This is an all-hands-on-deck moment that calls for us to put our shoulders to the wheel and unleash our collective ingenuity?neighbourhood by neighbourhood, block by block,? says Rowe.
The p...