Poor Charlie's Almanack

Praise for the first two volumes of the Poor Richard series of almanacs for architects and planners by MARK DAVID MAJOR: “worthwhile” and “thought-provoking” “readers will love” Poor Richard in “following both Benjamin Franklin and Ambrose Bierce” (Planning Magazine and Portland Book Review).

This book focuses on the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns on the welfare of the urban poor in the city of Harare, Zimbabwe. The authors look through the lenses of the urban health penalty, the right to the city, complexity theory, and distributive justice theory. These four theories help situate the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the urban poor in the theoretical foundations that raise issues of how the poor are affected by disease/health pandemics, due to their living conditions. Uniquely, the authors use remote ethnography tools such as rich texts, video diaries and photo uploads to provide evidence-based stories of how COVID-19 mobility restrictions have affected poor urbanites in Harare.