Urban
Resilience
Governance

Social ties and resilience dur­ing the COVID-19 pandemic

Description

The quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of social ties are a cru­cial fac­tor in the abil­i­ty of cit­i­zens and com­mu­ni­ties to recov­er from a dis­as­ter. In the con­text of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and pub­lic health guide­lines regard­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, social bonds are now even more like­ly to influ­ence post-cri­sis recov­ery. Changes in social ties due to the pan­dem­ic can also have neg­a­tive con­se­quences on resources nor­mal­ly acces­si­ble to indi­vid­u­als in times of crisis. 

With this back­drop in mind, Cité-ID has obtained a man­date from the City of Mon­tréal and Montréal’s Pub­lic Health Direc­torate to car­ry out a study on the social ties of Mon­treal­ers in six bor­oughs. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is whether social ties have pro­mot­ed indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive resilience dur­ing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Con­duct­ed to help Montréal’s pub­lic author­i­ties and their part­ners increase resilience through­out the city, the Cité-ID study will explore the role of social ties in rela­tion to 1) adher­ence to pub­lic health direc­tives; 2) reduc­tions in the neg­a­tive effects of pan­dem­ic quar­an­tine lock­downs on indi­vid­ual men­tal health and qual­i­ty of life; and 3) col­lec­tive resilience through inter­per­son­al and orga­nized sup­port. Final­ly, the study also aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the close social ties of Montrealers. 

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