Performance can be vital to emergency preparedness

COVID-19 has transformed the ways we live and work in cities. There is now an urgent need to understand how to practise, make sense of and sustain city life in the context of pandemic prevention measures. Emergency preparedness and resilience planning (EPRP) has been at the heart of city responses to the current crisis. As we ‘emerge’ from the fervour of the last 18 months, there is an opportunity for us to build what Helen Hinds has referred to as a need for ‘entirely new ways of thinking’ about pandemic planning, and EPRP more broadly (letter to authors, May 2020). Taking account of perspectives, practices and strategies from the arts in EPRP processes reveals valuable ways of enabling and sustaining pandemic control measures and reimagining city life. Here, we are responding to recent calls for new and imaginative modes of thinking and practice in EPRP (e.g.: CRJ 15:4) to explore the strategic importance of cities’ performances (social and aesthetic) to city EPRP.