Humanity’s social and economic development has been challenged by a range of adversities over the millennia that have caused widespread and unimaginable suffering. At the same time, these challenges have forced humans to evolve more wisely, overcoming adversity through creativity and leading to advancements in science and technology, medicine, ethics and legal systems, and socio-political systems. The dynamics of risks and opportunities caused by COVID-19, in the built, cyber, social and economic environments, present opportunities for deepening our understanding of resilient and sustainable development and infrastructure. This article reflects on five lessons that COVID-19 is teaching us about what it means to develop sustainably through the lens of transportation: (1) sustainable development planning and analytical frameworks must be comprehensive, for long-term sustainability; (2) multi-modal transportation is a superior vision for sustainable development than any one particular mode; (3) tele-activities are part of an effective infrastructure sustainability strategy; (4) economic capital is critically important to sustainable development even when it is not a critical existential threat, and, (5) effective social capital is essential in global disaster resistance and recovery, and can and must be leveraged between fast-moving and slow-moving disasters. Resilient and sustainable infrastructure will continue to be critical to addressing evolving natural and man-made hazards in the 21st Century.

The March 2011 disasters exposed the ineffectiveness of Japan’s political leaders, evoking three broad questions. First, why did the Kan cabinet fail to provide effective leadership in response to the disasters and why was a succession of governments unable to guide Japan out of the seemingly interminable economic malaise of the “lost decades”? The fact that Japan’s leaders possess similar powers to those of counterparts in other democratic polities suggests that a dysfunctional cabinet system is the culprit. So why is it that Japan has parliamentary democracy in form but not in practice? ... More The March 2011 disasters exposed the ineffectiveness of Japan’s political leaders, evoking three broad questions. First, why did the Kan cabinet fail to provide effective leadership in response to the disasters and why was a succession of governments unable to guide Japan out of the seemingly interminable economic malaise of the “lost decades”? The fact that Japan’s leaders possess similar powers to those of counterparts in other democratic polities suggests that a dysfunctional cabinet system is the culprit. So why is it that Japan has parliamentary democracy in form but not in practice? This is puzzling given that postwar Japan has been governed under institutional arrangements modeled after Britain’s “Westminster system,” and yet cabinet government has not set root. And, third, what gives Japan’s parliamentary cabinet system its characteristic form and function? This draws attention to the shaping effect and distributional consequences of institutions, as well as the role of critical junctures in creating strategic openings for change. And so, to understand Japan’s cabinet system, it is essential to trace its evolution. This leads backward in time from the recent challenges of “Twisted Diets” and coalition governments to institutional solutions rendered by reformers in the 1990s, the legacies of protracted single-party rule, actions taken by American occupation planners, prewar technocrats, and party leaders, and, ultimately, to a cabal that emerged in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration. The development of the cabinet system can be seen as a proxy for Japan’s experiment with democratic governance in the longue durée.

Although definitions of resilience are wide-ranging, they ultimately aim to preserve functionality and performance during and after anticipated and unanticipated disruptions. Common themes for transportation system resilience include preparedness, robustness, response, and recovery. Adaptation is increasingly considered an important resilience ability for deeply uncertain conditions, and transformation an essential ability for sustainability. This paper discusses three factors that contribute to the development of resilience adaptively: (1) development of adaptive capabilities in an organization and its infrastructure systems to face known and unknown threats; (2) application of dynamic, adaptive, and robustness approaches in deeply uncertain conditions; and (3) mitigation of factors that cause or exacerbate unwanted disruptions to system function and performance—together with risk-based approaches to manage specific threats with well-understood likelihoods and consequences of occurrence. These factors enable an entity to adapt under deeply uncertain conditions—developing resilience as conditions change—and to adapt to curb the causes of disruptions. The benefits of developing resilience adaptively are to: enable the development of both threats-based and opportunities-based resilience; address deep uncertainties where it is impossible to quantify the chances and consequences of disruptions; and transition from merely managing symptoms to addressing the factors that cause, influence, or perpetuate them. These concepts are applied to develop an adaptive resilience improvement process for transportation agencies. This paper is potentially useful to practitioners interested in developing resilience adaptively and to researchers interested in risk-, adaptive and mitigation-based approaches to address known and unknown threats, for short- and long-term resilience gains.