Van der Berg, AngelaPieterse, Marius2024-11-122024-11-122024van der Berg, A. and Pieterse, M., 2024. Governing Urban Crisis Through Adaptive Urban Law: Lessons from City Responses to COVID-19 in the Netherlands and South Africa. Utrecht Law Review, 20(1).https://doi.org/10.36633/ulr.906https://hdl.handle.net/10566/19639The global Covid-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of urban systems and underscored the need to recalibrate regulatory and institutional frameworks for an anticipated crisis-prone future. This article explores the notion of ‘adaptive law and governance’ as a lens through which city authorities can test and modify legal and governance responses to future urban crises. It compares the experiences of managing Covid-19 in the two biggest cities in the Netherlands (Amsterdam and Rotterdam) and in South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town). This comparison, between two sets of urban municipal governments functioning under different constitutional systems and in different socio-economic contexts, provides insights pertaining to how adaptive urban governance during the pandemic was constrained or enabled by the interaction between the regulatory and institutional frameworks for and political realities of urban autonomy and intergovernmental relations.enAdaptive lawCitiesCOVID-19NetherlandsUrban CrisesArticle