ABSTRACT
Almost all Asian cities—and the world cities—are facing an unprecedented trial. They are at a crossroads of adopting and evaluating the best options to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and further developing resilient and adaptive planning and development alternatives. This chapter critically reviews the planning, development, and management responses to the pandemic in four major Asian cities: Tokyo, Ankara, Shanghai, and Singapore. These cities are experiencing an irreversible impact of the pandemic, and the corresponding gatekeepers are confronting a common challenge to tackle the exceptional circumstance. This chapter makes an analysis of their initiatives to achieve both immediate response to the global pandemic and strategic long-term resilience against future uncertainties. It contends that planning gatekeepers in Asian cities must prioritise and integrate public health and wellbeing (HeWe) infrastructure into future planning and development endeavours under a framework of urban resilience and sustainability. Thus, there is a need for a clear transformational and inclusive mandate for future planning, in which built environment and HeWe infrastructure need to be intertwined into forging a resilient, adaptive, green, equitable, and affordable urban development approach.
