The first roundtable discussion in this series looks at how government responds to citizens’ needs, particularly when dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. It is moderated by Louis Zacharilla, a co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum.

For all the damage, frustration and sorrow that COVID19 has brought us, it has also taught us lessons we needed to learn.

Some are personal. It turns out that my health depends on your health. If you refuse to wear a mask, you are expressing – not your independence – but a willingness to infect me.

Some are political. It turns out that, when we allow working people to live in poverty with no medical insurance, we create reservoirs of infection that keep blazing up like wildfires – or perhaps the avenging fires of a just God – to engulf us.

“Mommy, I can’t breathe!!” he shouted. It was more a petulant shriek than a genuine plea for help.

The mother of the 8-year old boy jostled him in that motherly way, pulled him toward her and adjusted his small mask as they continued walking along the CVS parking lot to the store. He had her attention. Mission accomplished.

2020 is the year when we started to really look at one another in our communities and found new heroes and beauty within our chaos. And broadband boosted the conversations. Attribution: “Zoe” by Yung Jake, Courtesy of Tripoli Gallery, Long Island

One year ago, those words had a way different context when they met your ears. While someone claiming lack of breath was never, medically, a good thing, it was never the trigger phrase for a cascade of events that have put cities and citizens in a dizzying spin of traumas. What we witness (mainly from our devices) are seismic cracks in the status quo, a form of grief and, as if we need proof that nothing is born without pain, genuine awakenings.

It is in this climate that we begin this year’s Top7 Site Visits around the world.

Zoom.

As a magic word, it puts “Shazam!” to shame.

Zoom. It is the only most visible of the many powerful broadband applications that are helping us get through COVID19. It stands for the transformation of broadband, almost overnight, from “nice to have” into “essential infrastructure,” as the pandemic spreads across nations and industries and keeps forcing changes in the way we live.

In this video, Lou Zacharilla speaks with Rev. Dr. Tony Hart, Pastor of Beulah Baptist Church in Wappingers Falls, NY, and Missy Wallace, Founder and Leader of the Nashville Institute for Faith and Work about how COVID-19 has had an impact on how we work and how we worship - and how those two things may be intertwined.

The Big Apple is the wrong name for New York this summer.

No one knows what will come to New York this autumn and beyond. It will not be the World Series, Tracy Letts’ new play or a fraction of our 65.2 million annual visitors. New York will not be as fine as apple pie by Columbus Day or Thanksgiving. These two holidays might not even be around by Christmas! Without its theaters, restaurants, museums and the everyday energy of vendors and street life, New York is a harsher, more hollow place, and no place for epicureans hungry for its unique slice of American culture.

In this episode of No Place But Home, Lou Zacharilla speaks with expert Dr. Roberto Gallardo about rural communities.

In this video, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla discusses COVID-19 with Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network’s Pat Schou.

She hears it every night precisely at 7:00 PM.

But tonight, she was running late for her shift and talking on her phone as briskly as she was scurrying to confront what is left of “The Beast” inside New York Presbyterian Hospital. She and her colleagues – and those of us shouting our thanks at her from balconies, windows & the street - have managed to put this son-of-a-bitch of a virus on the run and bend it with the authority of a blacksmith pounding hot steel to a more desired shape.

Finally.

In this episode of The New Abnormal series, ICF Co-Founders Lou Zacharilla and John Jung speak with Cyrus Tehrani of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Paddy Harrington of Frontier Co., and Institute without Boundaries at George Brown College graduate students Hardeep Kaur and Madalynne Lawrence. Their "Transforming into Ethical Smart Cities" playbook, website, and video launches this Friday, May 29 at 4pm EST - more information can be found at www.ethicalsmartcity.com