Planning for Pandemic Resilience: COVID-19 experience from urban slums in Khulna, Bangladesh

Surma, Salma Akter; Hakim, Sheikh Serajul; Rahman Lushan, Md. Saydur

COVID-19 worsened urban slum dwellers’ pre-existing vulnerabilities. Maintaining WHO-suggested physical distancing/isolation made planning more challenging in slums. This incites the need to investigating whether these resource-scarce communities – already susceptible to climate change, poverty, health services, infrastructure, and space constraints, could build resilience against COVID-19. What lack of resources/assets made communities vulnerable there and what adaptation measures were taken? What planning/management practices were adopted there, and to what extent WHO’s IPC guidelines (on transmission prevention and control) could be followed? Findings show that Pre-COVID-19 economic, infrastructural, and health-related issues had clearly affected slum dwellers’ COVID-19-time vulnerabilities. While poor infrastructure and sanitation, informal employment, livelihood diversity, superstition, and comorbidities remained the key ‘internal’ issues, lack of institutional preparedness and safety-net programs, discontinued municipal services and inaccessible/untrustworthy healthcare services and corruption/bias/non-coordination in beneficiary selection remained the key ‘external’ issues. Information sharing, openness to pandemic knowledge, and dwellers’ active participation in awareness/training programs have been the most adopted measures. Aid schemes, despite criticisms, saved dwellers from starvation. Therefore, this proved to be a key coping element. However, NGOs systematic monetary aid gave dwellers most flexibility in spending. On top, NGOs proved to be the most vital external stakeholder in all sectors except for built environment/planning. To increase adaptive capacity, scopes remain in maximizing the use of community infrastructure in future events. Simultaneously, spatial aspects, alongside the non-spatial seemed crucial in tackling complex poverty-profiles, resource-scarcity, and vulnerabilities of slums. Findings are based on NGO BRAC’s existing dataset and fieldworks between April-August 2020 on 29 slums in Khulna, Bangladesh using a qualitative methodology. The study contributes to a growing body of knowledge and practice on resilient planning for COVID-19 (and similar future pandemics), especially for slums, while addressing its overlooked spatial dimensions.