Following the nationwide lockdown due to the Covid-19 crisis, an opportunity was seen to organise a webinar series around rethinking cities as a theme. The underlying assumptions behind the series included: (a) cities as they are and the way they are growing and developing do not look like meeting the challenge of unprecedented population growth (840 million by 2050) and delivering on 7/8 percent economic growth expectation; (b) the governmental effort alone is not adequate to ensure healthy, liveable, productive, inclusive and sustainable cities, and (c) wider society has  the human capital with the required skills, knowledge, knowhow and even motivation to contribute meaningfully in search for new approaches and solutions.

The webinar series is seen as feeding into the INHAF proposal on CITIURI: Citizens Urban Initiative, in terms of: (a) presenting it on a public platform  as a national effort by  a  broadly defined civil society on rethinking the urban challenge and repositioning response, (b) getting to know more individuals, organizations and institutions, through their engagement with the Webinars for their skills, expertise, experience and interest, (c) mapping  human and other resources that could be tapped to strengthen CITIURI, (d) building a support constituency through working together and sharing, (e) using a part of the Webinar output as a start-up material for sectoral project activity, and (f) presenting CITIURI as a public cause and getting a message across of a wider societal ownership.