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Emergencies such as COVID-19 trigger calls for innovation and invoke forced experimentation They can shift what is thinkable and thus licence social and institutional change, opening space wherein new sociopolitical arrangements might emerge Cities are at the heart of the COVID-19 emergency, in terms of impact, management, and solutions This commentary considers the implications of COVID-19 for urban governance innovation Incrementally, innovation has become a ?new normal? across multiple fields of social, economic, technological, and environmental endeavour as disruptive enhancements are sought to address complex problems: urban governance is no exception In cities, diverse new ecosystems of innovative urban governance have been emerging with the potential to reshape the politics and parameters of urban decision making, produce new institutional settings, reconstitute cities' multiscalar relations, and invoke new forms of power This commentary considers urban governance innovation in COVID times Drawing from Australian and international examples, we reflect on the actors taking centre stage as cities' responses to the pandemic take shape and consider the governing mechanisms being evoked As these innovations embed more deeply the distributed nature of urban governance, we close with thoughts on the risks and opportunities that COVID-19 presents for seeking inclusive innovation in the field of urban governance

Has feminist geography really lost all relevance? This paper examines what the revitalisation of interest in feminist thought and practice, especially in Australia, means for geography. We illuminate the trajectory of the feminist revitalisation in new media and beyond through developing a spatial analysis influenced by Rose and Fincher. Notions of paradoxical space and issue publics inform this reading of two pivotal moments in the feminist revitalisation: first, the creation of Destroy the Joint, a campaign launched and maintained in Facebook and Twitter spaces; and second, the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's speech against sexism and misogyny in Parliament in October 2012. Both these moments, coming from political and public spaces, received worldwide interest, and we critically examine the context and ramifications of these instances while situating the institutional processes surrounding them within the growing feminist revitalisation. In so doing, we argue that these Australian-based cases indicate a growing feminist movement that is open and multiply focused, connecting personal politics to public campaigning, and achieving material impacts. We conclude that developing a feminist geography of new media is a challenging task, as these spaces circumvent and renegotiate traditional spatial dimensions – including scale and place – through their dynamic networks. It is, nevertheless, a task worth doing.