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ACADEMIA Letters Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19 Edna Pasher Boaz Tadmor Milka Dunchin Lee Sharir According to the complexity theory, to solve complex issues you need a complex design of answers and methods. We suggest that in the current demanding COVID-19 pandemic this approach of “embracing complexity” can be an effective and helpful tool for successfully coping with the demanding challenges, especially in the cities. There are different methodologies that enable decision-makers and stakeholders to implement the principles of complexity easily and efficiently during crises such as COVID-19 and in this article, we present some examples of this kind of implementation. In recent years, the “systems theory” has drawn ideas and understandings from chaos theory, network research, and the complexity theory that belongs to the field of exact sciences and natural sciences. (Mitleton-Kelly,2003) From this perspective, it re-examines the ways people and groups are required to make decisions and shape strategies and a new field of science studying how parts of a system and their relationships give rise to the collective behaviors of the system, and how the system interrelates with its environment. (Bar-Yam,2002) While it proposes that systems are unpredictable, they are also constrained by order-generating rules. (Mitleton-Kelly,2003) The complexity theory can be implemented in various forms by using its principles like connectivity, engagement, experimentation, self-organization, co-evolution, and co-creation. These principles can be applied in a lot of frameworks, organizations,s, and cases of crisis for reaching new ways of actions and perspectives. (Bar-Yam 2002. Mitleton-Kelly, 2018) According to this theory, the city is a living organism, an ecosystem in which there are close relationships among streams of resources, knowledge, and people. It is a system in Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 1 which, as in nature, a line of co-evolution occurs – the emergence of processes and selforganization of all individuals in the system – that enables the creation of a new order in a natural evolutionary process. (Mitleton-Kelly, 2018) The first one to do the link between complexity sciences and cities was Jacobs (1961) who referred to the latter as ‘problems of organized complexity. In addition, the reality is dynamic and the search for a single optimal strategy may not be possible and undesirable, any strategy can be optimal under such and other conditions. So, the ultimate strategy is to work parallel on several experiments that have low costs and low risk, draw conclusions from each experiment and upgrade the strategy. (Mitleton-Kelly,2018) According to Bar-Yam (2018), many of the key problems and crises today are affected by human activities, and this way global connectivity leads to vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 is known today to be a very complex and surprising disease. (Laure Wynants, Ben Van Calster, et al. 2020) is a great example of global connectivity, a local crisis that has started in China and become worldwide quickly and affects not just the healthcare system but also a lot of industries. Cities are home to most of the world population and are fulfill the social needs of their residents for physical venues for interactions that generate innovation, art, culture, and economic activity. (Shafiri, Khavarian-Garmsir,2020) Jane Jacobs inspired us to acknowledge the fact that cities are about people, and particularly about bringing people together (Martin, 2006). For a city to keep pace with the modern world, or to catch up with it, it must focus first and foremost on learning and understanding the needs of its residents and their assets and only then attempt to provide them with appropriate services through technological media. (Pasher, Pross,2017) However, the high concentration of people and activities in cities make them vulnerable to various stressors such as natural and man-made disasters. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the issue of urban vulnerability to pandemics and the fact that a high concentration of population and economic activities happen in cities, they are often hotspots of infections. (Shafiri, Khavarian-Garmsir,2020) In this crisis, the behavior of the residents became a part of the contract between themselves, their friends, and leaders, while the last had to address and educate the population taking care of themselves, their siblings, and friends. Therefore the trust and transparency between residents and leaders became a critical element in obeying the requests and guidelines and reducing the number of infections. Like in Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric quote: ‘people support what they help create (Krames,2001) This statement is on the same line with the global vision for smart cities which are expected to deliver much more than efficiency and excellence in services for residents. The new vision prioriAcademia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 2 tizes a deeper engagement with the community, involving an open dialogue with and between residents, the creation of new models for trading and sharing goods and services, and most importantly, making cities liveable and equitable. (Pasher,Herzog,Harir,Turjeman,Zhiqiang, 2018) This vision is also valid for a healthy city and the principle of engagement of all the stakeholders supported by complexity theory. For example, one of the major criteria for a load of infection spread in a city,” the color”: red or green that was critical to deciding about different measures to be taken meaning alleviating or putting more constraints on the residents. The COVID-19 epidemic provides all of us with the experience of dealing with uncertainty and with the need for local adaptive solutions in addition to top-down regulations. Few case studies were published recently presenting success stories on a local level like in Shenzhen, China, a city of 22 million inhabitants combined central regulations with 660 community multidisciplinary teams working on the neighborhood level (Zou, Shu, Feng, 2020). In each residential community, cadres disseminated information to residents, controlled movement, provided on-site health assessments, psychological support, COVID-19 testing, and delivered food and medicine to residents sheltering at home. They succeeded in combating the epidemic within a few weeks. Although cities in the Czech Republic are mostly authorized, they differ in their type of leadership behavior and managing the COVID-19 crisis (Placek, Spacek, Ochrana, 2020). The “passive” ones presented a high degree of reliance on central state assistance. They did not prepare their own pandemic crisis plan and applied primarily the central government restrictions. The ‘active’ ones had an adaptive evolutionary strategy and succeeded in coping with the crisis. Local governments of this type prepared their own pandemic plans and imposed restrictions even before they were announced by the central government. In Israel, there are several examples of active local leadership, where the activist and participatory approach resulted in reducing the spread of the COVID-19 (not published yet). At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty, lack of knowledge, and misinformation regarding personal, economic, societal, and medical demands and needs. Medical chaotic phases happened, a lot of questions regarding day to day way of life and behavior of different sectors of the population were asked by different experts with no one conclusive and definitive answer, like how to treat the diseased people, different modes of treatment were used without real valid proof, no evidence-based knowledge and each hospital used its own best experience, protocols, and judgment. Medical knowledge was gathered intensively and communication between medical systems around the world, directly or through the W.H.O, was on a day-to-day basis. One of the suggested ways to act is through Transformational Learning Approaches which means using dialogue to understand diverse views, attain a more inclusive frame of reference, Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 3 communication that fosters democratic participation. (Yukawa, 2015). According to the Transformational Learning Approaches, the medical community reorganized itself and started to publish newly collected information through virtual meetings, peer review journal articles, and professional social media. This way the knowledge traveled fast, was transparent and all medical stakeholders were involved, commented, and shared their remarks. This connectivity through the different media vehicles brought a new and coherent emerging understanding about the stages of the disease, the mode of transmission, ways of protecting people, and how to diagnose, predict deterioration, and treat the diseased people: drugs, monitoring, and artificial respiration. Knowledge and experience are continuing to emerge almost any day with new scientific articles, for example by July 2020 more than 20,000 papers about COVID-19 were published. But although all the above complexity of the disease is still going on and its affections on society in a variety of ways still present. For example, after discharge from the hospital or after becoming negative on the viral testing, the recovers may have long-lasting influences and side effects on different body organs and systems. In addition, looking at the social element of the pandemic, every country has its own characteristics and skeleton of the political system, cultural heritage and beliefs, different educational systems, and different levels of trust between leaders and people. All of those interacting together, have a critical influence on the emergent behavior of the population, and elements of personal example, transparent delivered information, transparent understanding of decision-taking, and trust are critical to moving from chaos to a safe zone when people are involved. While living biochemical and physiological systems can adapt to each other according to very strict physical laws, humans who have mind and soul, sentiments and thoughts, values and norms, specific culture, egos, and legal and ethical responsibilities can be surprisingly disobedient and unpredicted in their behavior, in this area dealing with people is much more complex than dealing with viruses. In the current stage of the pandemia, there are signs of ’pandemic fatigue’ (WHO, 2020), presented by demotivation to follow recommended protective behaviors. It is an expected and natural response to a prolonged public health crisis. WHO suggests a multifactorial action plan to handle this new problem, which is based on the barriers and drivers experienced by people, and which is implemented in an integrated way across all levels of society. The COVID-19 pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to reflect how cities can embrace complexity theory to minimize the impacts, deal with uncertainty, engage the citizens and enhance urban pandemic resilience. Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 4 The implementation of the principles of complexity in cities can make a real change in times of crisis, and mostly depends on the decision-makers and their flexibility to embrace new methods, a different way of thinking, and transformative leadership that enables successful dealing with complex situations. Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 5
ACADEMIA Letters Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19 Edna Pasher Boaz Tadmor Milka Dunchin Lee Sharir According to the complexity theory, to solve complex issues you need a complex design of answers and methods. We suggest that in the current demanding COVID-19 pandemic this approach of “embracing complexity” can be an effective and helpful tool for successfully coping with the demanding challenges, especially in the cities. There are different methodologies that enable decision-makers and stakeholders to implement the principles of complexity easily and efficiently during crises such as COVID-19 and in this article, we present some examples of this kind of implementation. In recent years, the “systems theory” has drawn ideas and understandings from chaos theory, network research, and the complexity theory that belongs to the field of exact sciences and natural sciences. (Mitleton-Kelly,2003) From this perspective, it re-examines the ways people and groups are required to make decisions and shape strategies and a new field of science studying how parts of a system and their relationships give rise to the collective behaviors of the system, and how the system interrelates with its environment. (Bar-Yam,2002) While it proposes that systems are unpredictable, they are also constrained by order-generating rules. (Mitleton-Kelly,2003) The complexity theory can be implemented in various forms by using its principles like connectivity, engagement, experimentation, self-organization, co-evolution, and co-creation. These principles can be applied in a lot of frameworks, organizations,s, and cases of crisis for reaching new ways of actions and perspectives. (Bar-Yam 2002. Mitleton-Kelly, 2018) According to this theory, the city is a living organism, an ecosystem in which there are close relationships among streams of resources, knowledge, and people. It is a system in Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 1 which, as in nature, a line of co-evolution occurs – the emergence of processes and selforganization of all individuals in the system – that enables the creation of a new order in a natural evolutionary process. (Mitleton-Kelly, 2018) The first one to do the link between complexity sciences and cities was Jacobs (1961) who referred to the latter as ‘problems of organized complexity. In addition, the reality is dynamic and the search for a single optimal strategy may not be possible and undesirable, any strategy can be optimal under such and other conditions. So, the ultimate strategy is to work parallel on several experiments that have low costs and low risk, draw conclusions from each experiment and upgrade the strategy. (Mitleton-Kelly,2018) According to Bar-Yam (2018), many of the key problems and crises today are affected by human activities, and this way global connectivity leads to vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 is known today to be a very complex and surprising disease. (Laure Wynants, Ben Van Calster, et al. 2020) is a great example of global connectivity, a local crisis that has started in China and become worldwide quickly and affects not just the healthcare system but also a lot of industries. Cities are home to most of the world population and are fulfill the social needs of their residents for physical venues for interactions that generate innovation, art, culture, and economic activity. (Shafiri, Khavarian-Garmsir,2020) Jane Jacobs inspired us to acknowledge the fact that cities are about people, and particularly about bringing people together (Martin, 2006). For a city to keep pace with the modern world, or to catch up with it, it must focus first and foremost on learning and understanding the needs of its residents and their assets and only then attempt to provide them with appropriate services through technological media. (Pasher, Pross,2017) However, the high concentration of people and activities in cities make them vulnerable to various stressors such as natural and man-made disasters. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the issue of urban vulnerability to pandemics and the fact that a high concentration of population and economic activities happen in cities, they are often hotspots of infections. (Shafiri, Khavarian-Garmsir,2020) In this crisis, the behavior of the residents became a part of the contract between themselves, their friends, and leaders, while the last had to address and educate the population taking care of themselves, their siblings, and friends. Therefore the trust and transparency between residents and leaders became a critical element in obeying the requests and guidelines and reducing the number of infections. Like in Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric quote: ‘people support what they help create (Krames,2001) This statement is on the same line with the global vision for smart cities which are expected to deliver much more than efficiency and excellence in services for residents. The new vision prioriAcademia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 2 tizes a deeper engagement with the community, involving an open dialogue with and between residents, the creation of new models for trading and sharing goods and services, and most importantly, making cities liveable and equitable. (Pasher,Herzog,Harir,Turjeman,Zhiqiang, 2018) This vision is also valid for a healthy city and the principle of engagement of all the stakeholders supported by complexity theory. For example, one of the major criteria for a load of infection spread in a city,” the color”: red or green that was critical to deciding about different measures to be taken meaning alleviating or putting more constraints on the residents. The COVID-19 epidemic provides all of us with the experience of dealing with uncertainty and with the need for local adaptive solutions in addition to top-down regulations. Few case studies were published recently presenting success stories on a local level like in Shenzhen, China, a city of 22 million inhabitants combined central regulations with 660 community multidisciplinary teams working on the neighborhood level (Zou, Shu, Feng, 2020). In each residential community, cadres disseminated information to residents, controlled movement, provided on-site health assessments, psychological support, COVID-19 testing, and delivered food and medicine to residents sheltering at home. They succeeded in combating the epidemic within a few weeks. Although cities in the Czech Republic are mostly authorized, they differ in their type of leadership behavior and managing the COVID-19 crisis (Placek, Spacek, Ochrana, 2020). The “passive” ones presented a high degree of reliance on central state assistance. They did not prepare their own pandemic crisis plan and applied primarily the central government restrictions. The ‘active’ ones had an adaptive evolutionary strategy and succeeded in coping with the crisis. Local governments of this type prepared their own pandemic plans and imposed restrictions even before they were announced by the central government. In Israel, there are several examples of active local leadership, where the activist and participatory approach resulted in reducing the spread of the COVID-19 (not published yet). At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty, lack of knowledge, and misinformation regarding personal, economic, societal, and medical demands and needs. Medical chaotic phases happened, a lot of questions regarding day to day way of life and behavior of different sectors of the population were asked by different experts with no one conclusive and definitive answer, like how to treat the diseased people, different modes of treatment were used without real valid proof, no evidence-based knowledge and each hospital used its own best experience, protocols, and judgment. Medical knowledge was gathered intensively and communication between medical systems around the world, directly or through the W.H.O, was on a day-to-day basis. One of the suggested ways to act is through Transformational Learning Approaches which means using dialogue to understand diverse views, attain a more inclusive frame of reference, Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 3 communication that fosters democratic participation. (Yukawa, 2015). According to the Transformational Learning Approaches, the medical community reorganized itself and started to publish newly collected information through virtual meetings, peer review journal articles, and professional social media. This way the knowledge traveled fast, was transparent and all medical stakeholders were involved, commented, and shared their remarks. This connectivity through the different media vehicles brought a new and coherent emerging understanding about the stages of the disease, the mode of transmission, ways of protecting people, and how to diagnose, predict deterioration, and treat the diseased people: drugs, monitoring, and artificial respiration. Knowledge and experience are continuing to emerge almost any day with new scientific articles, for example by July 2020 more than 20,000 papers about COVID-19 were published. But although all the above complexity of the disease is still going on and its affections on society in a variety of ways still present. For example, after discharge from the hospital or after becoming negative on the viral testing, the recovers may have long-lasting influences and side effects on different body organs and systems. In addition, looking at the social element of the pandemic, every country has its own characteristics and skeleton of the political system, cultural heritage and beliefs, different educational systems, and different levels of trust between leaders and people. All of those interacting together, have a critical influence on the emergent behavior of the population, and elements of personal example, transparent delivered information, transparent understanding of decision-taking, and trust are critical to moving from chaos to a safe zone when people are involved. While living biochemical and physiological systems can adapt to each other according to very strict physical laws, humans who have mind and soul, sentiments and thoughts, values and norms, specific culture, egos, and legal and ethical responsibilities can be surprisingly disobedient and unpredicted in their behavior, in this area dealing with people is much more complex than dealing with viruses. In the current stage of the pandemia, there are signs of ’pandemic fatigue’ (WHO, 2020), presented by demotivation to follow recommended protective behaviors. It is an expected and natural response to a prolonged public health crisis. WHO suggests a multifactorial action plan to handle this new problem, which is based on the barriers and drivers experienced by people, and which is implemented in an integrated way across all levels of society. The COVID-19 pandemic offers an unprecedented opportunity to reflect how cities can embrace complexity theory to minimize the impacts, deal with uncertainty, engage the citizens and enhance urban pandemic resilience. Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 4 The implementation of the principles of complexity in cities can make a real change in times of crisis, and mostly depends on the decision-makers and their flexibility to embrace new methods, a different way of thinking, and transformative leadership that enables successful dealing with complex situations. Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Lee Sharir, lees@pasher.co.il Citation: Pasher, E., Tadmor, B., Dunchin, M., Sharir, L. (2021). Embracing complexity for healthy cities during COVID-19. Academia Letters, Article 1950. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1950. 5