ISSUES AND WAY FORWARD FOR THE SMART SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES STANDARDS: THE MALAYSIAN CASE IN THE POST-COVID-19 ERA

Governing a city’s development with the use of standards started relatively recently, in the mid-2010s. However, the issues of such city standards in systematically governing future smart cities remains largely unknown under the digital infrastructural stress of the post-COVID-19 era. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the issues and directions in developing the Malaysian smart sustainable cities and communities standards that suit the post-COVID-19 era. This study applied the multiple case study method to compare the international literatures and the local smart city webinars. The results showed that smart city standards were welcomed by policymakers and practitioners, although issues such as learning, connectivity, and citizenship rationale need to be addressed. More focus should be put on how humans relearn and responsibly participate in the post-COVID-19 cyber-physical ecosystem in order to create a healthy and sustainable digital-based society. This paper has contributed as one of the first researches examining the role of smart city standards in Malaysia.