The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted human socioeconomic activities, leaving an everlasting impact on urban systems. As a result, there is a growing scholarly focus on exploring how urban planning strategies and tools can help create resilient cities. In Saudi Arabia, the pilgrimage city of Makkah, which has always faced the challenge of managing crowds during the annual pilgrimage, was left deserted due to lockdowns and social distancing measures. To quickly revive socioeconomic and pilgrimage activities in the city, a set of digital tools and communication technologies were deployed to manage crowds and enforce social distancing to minimize the spread of the COVID-19 virus. This study examines the role of digitalization and smartification in reviving the city and the importance of context in building urban resilience. This study used desktop research and case study analysis to highlight the transformation to the new normal and the development of future smart technologies for the city. Smart solutions provided valuable support in reducing the impacts of the pandemic and restarting Makkah’s economy. Although most activities have been restored, some facilities and services are still operating below capacity. Digitalization and smartification of urban services could play a major role in improving service delivery and urban resilience.

One of the ways to eliminate poverty is through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that is often promoted as central to reviving and sustaining regional communities. In the context of Malaysia, however, the level of communication in urban and rural areas has seen a gap in terms of access to ICTs. Though various initiatives are taken to close the digital gaps, more efforts are needed. This paper intends to explore the extent to which ICTs in rural areas of northern Peninsular Malaysia are able to raise the socio-economic development of the communities. Using questionnaires and in-depth interviews, emphasis is given to analyze the role of ICTs in poverty reduction processes upholding regional developments. It has been observed that solving common causes for the communities’ access and socio-economic growth needs strategic implementation of policies at the central core and pragmatic implementation of actions at the grass root level.

Identification of reliable alternative climate input data for hydrological modelling is important to manage water resources and reduce water-related hazards in ungauged or poorly gauged basins. This study aims to evaluate the capability of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (NCEP-CFSR) and China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Dataset for the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model (CMADS) for simulating streamflow in the Muda River Basin (MRB), Malaysia. The capability was evaluated in two perspectives: (1) the climate aspect—validation of precipitation, maximum and minimum temperatures from 2008 to 2014; and (2) the hydrology aspect—comparison of the accuracy of SWAT modelling by the gauge station, NCEP-CFSR and CMADS products. The results show that CMADS had a better performance than NCEP-CFSR in the climate aspect, especially for the temperature data and daily precipitation detection capability. For the hydrological aspect, the gauge station had a “very good” performance in a monthly streamflow simulation, followed by CMADS and NCEP-CFSR. In detail, CMADS showed an acceptable performance in SWAT modelling, but some improvements such as bias correction and further SWAT calibration are needed. In contrast, NCEP-CFRS had an unacceptable performance in validation as it dramatically overestimated the low flows of MRB and contains time lag in peak flows estimation.

World city network formation is one of the most robust trends in the context of globalization. The unprecedented economic transformation and infrastructure restructuring enable China to integrate in world city network overwhelmingly. The purpose of this paper is aiming to conduct a network analysis of Chinese air transportation network based upon large-scale collected data of inter-city air passengers’ volume thereby identifying the world city network of Chinese cities, as well as the internal cooperative relationship and hierarchical structure of these articulations in the network. There are 80 sample cities are enclosed in this air transportation network model using UCINET, which is pioneering social network analytical software. Clearly, UCINET is applied to manipulate the matrix of inter-city air passengers flows in order to elaborate analyze of density of the whole network, to calculate multiple centrality of each node cities, which strives to identify the dominance of each cities’ hierarchical power and positions. In addition, NetDraw program in UCINET is designed to visualize the whole network whereas CONCOR program is operationalized to classify major subgroups within national air transportation network of China. Based on the analysis, we can find that Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou play a dominant role in this network, and it is evident that there exist some robust cooperative relationships within and between subgroups arisen from overall air transportation network. Overall, these findings consolidate a concrete cornerstone of Chinese world city network formation.

Designated high-tech spaces such as science and high-technology parks have come to the fore as vehicles for promoting local and regional economic development in many nations. The evidence of their efficacy is mixed and reflects contradictions in the roles they are asked to perform in the service of national economic modernization. Indeed, in this respect and in many instances, their value may be largely political and rhetorical. Malaysia is a case in point and one we focus on in this paper, where we discuss the contribution of high-tech spaces—Kulim High-Tech Park, Technology Park Malaysia, BioXCell, and the multimedia supercorridor—to the political economy of economic modernization. Drawing on original interview material, we highlight the tangled intraterritorial and extraterritorial geographies in which these privileged high-tech spaces are positioned.

S.L. Khoo et al.: 'The Promise and Perils of the Island City of George Town (Penang) as a Creative City'