The pandemic has demonstrated the multiple, often reinforcing, ways in which specific drivers of vulnerability interact both in generating urban risk and shaping who is more or less able to recover  . Again, this is not a new lesson for urban climate change adaptation, but it is a lesson that has not yet been seen to enter into routine practice for urban adaptation. Two key challenges for climate change adaptation are the associations between COVID-19 risk and urban connectivity and overcrowding. Connectivity has been presented in urban adaptation policy as a virtue, a means to share risk and diversity inputs , COVID-19 has surfaced the unevenness with which people and places are connected and also the need to balance connectivity against risk transfer, through the failure of food supply chains or remittance flows, as well as by the direct transfer of disease . High-density living has advantages for urban resource efficiency including benefiting climate change mitigation. When high-density living is not supported by adequate access to critical infrastructure , this exacerbates overcrowding and generates vulnerability to multiple risks, including climate change hazards and communicable disease . Where overcrowding coincides with precarious livelihoods, for example in informal settlements, risk is further elevated . Neighbourhood associations  have been an important source of resilience through providing trusted information, access to food and water for washing during the pandemic and serving populations unable to access government or market provision . Here local organising has not only met gaps in service provision, but opened dialogue to vision and organise for alternative development futures. These distinctly urban challenges should be read as a sub-set of wider cross-cutting lessons for recovery from COVID-19 .
IPCC
Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
IPCC Report