Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luisa Sotomayor, Associate professor, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
Crises seem to be everywhere. We live through a moment of generalized crisis — called poly– or perma-crisis by some. In this context, the nation-state often appears as the default institution and ideological framework for addressing challenges. But the nation-state is not always the best placed entity to respond to crises.
Recent events suggest that local, urban and municipal intervention can be effective in the face of crisis. In the United States, various crises have recently been responded to by municipal action.
The election of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in November 2025 signalled a switch in attention that foregrounded civic alternatives to national overreach.
Minneapolis has seen unprecedented rallying by civic and grassroots forces who mobilized to protect persecuted neighbours and co-workers. This response to a crisis represents a politics of care and solidarity. It has also recognized an urban form of “non-status citizenship” beyond legal status, grounded in proximity and moral obligation to neighbours and migrants.
Cities are where many crises are lived, governed and collectively handled most directly. Daily social and economic life in cities encourages practical and creative responses to overlapping crises.In our current project about multi-level crisis management in Canada and the United Kingdom, we want to better understand the potential of local, urban and community-based solutions to the overlapping crises people currently experience.
Crisis urbanism
We start from the assumption that the urban way of life is central to societies both inside and outside city regions. Cities aren’t just places where multiple crises may collide. They’re also places where people develop ways to navigate them. They do so through shared learning and, in some cases, organized forms of resistance and alternative responses to state strategies.
A study conducted by one of our research partners, urban and suburban studies professor Roger Keil, called this phenomenon crisis urbanism. The research, which is also at the basis of this article, argues that crises have to be seen more as ongoing processes that are part of everyday urban life, rather than singular events.
Cities can create opportunities that national governments might overlook or fail to provide. For example, communities can establish processes for democratic dialogue to confront the crises they face. These efforts go beyond reacting to failure, helping to build alternative institutional capacities.
The COVID-19 pandemic offers a strong example of how local entities stepped in when traditional modes of governance failed in their crisis response. In Toronto’s suburban Peel Region, for example, conventional government public health responses were lacking. In this situation, a community-based network of social service organizations was critical to the delivery of an ultimately successful crisis response.
A 2025 study found that the same network under the name Metamorphosis rallied more than 100 member organizations in response to the province of Ontario’s decision in 2023 — later abandoned — to dissolve Peel Region, the network’s territorial base and functional context of action. Metamorphosis’s “social service regionalism” can be viewed as an example of care and repair politics made visible by seeing crises like a city.
Enduring examples of local strength
An example of how crisis is not an event but a process comes from Scotland. Local organizations there — crucial in organizing a pandemic response from the bottom up — continued their activity even in an unfavourable national political landscape.
Local governments can also respond to crises by changing how they operate. A clear example is Bogotá’s neighbourhood-based Care Blocks, created during the COVID-19 pandemic to address a growing care crisis. The program turned long-standing feminist groups’ demands into public policy by recognizing unpaid care work as a shared social responsibility, not just a private burden.
Through Manzanas del Cuidado (Care Blocks), the city provides free domestic, social, educational, legal and psychological services to unpaid caregivers. By placing these services within walking distance of homes, the program reduces time pressures — especially for women, who do most care work. Rather than offering only short-term relief, Bogotá redesigned local institutions to embed care into their functioning.
As hubs of care, repair and resistance, cities play a vital role in crisis response, bringing together communities and civil society who, with local governments and agencies, can mobilize positive change.
Returning to Minneapolis, Rock icon Bruce Springsteen put it into poetic terms:
“A city aflame fought fire and ice …
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringin’ through the night …
Our city’s heart and soul persists
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis.
– ref. From Minneapolis to Toronto and Bogotá, cities showcase new ways to address crises – https://theconversation.com/from-minneapolis-to-toronto-and-bogota-cities-showcase-new-ways-to-address-crises-275262
