Coronavirus (COVID-19) raises an essential debate about implementing the ideas and insights of smart technology in the fields of urban planning and design. This commentary sheds light on considerations and challenges in the area of knowledge in these fields as consequences of the recent pandemic. The concluded remarks cover issues with a specific focus on accelerating the digital transformation in education and a typo-morphological analysis that ends with revisiting the norms and standards of social distancing. Besides, this commentary recommends research directions to follow after the pandemic recedes, tackling the multidisciplinarity between fields of specialisation.

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Many countries are now cautiously seeking to return to relatively normal lifestyles while maintaining essential preventive measures. Although individual nations' reopening policies have varied widely, depending on their assessment of the outbreak, a key common policy has been maintenance of social distancing. Social distancing helps to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, yet it is also difficult to implement in urban spaces. Compact cities, where large numbers of pedestrians and cyclists are often packed closely together, encounter especially acute challenges. To achieve the more open public spaces essential for social distancing, changes have to occur in design and use of the urban fabric; new design standards permitting flexibility and variability of use need to be formulated, and the use of sidewalks and of other open spaces needs to be reshaped. Designers also need to consider social well-being. How will it be possible to provide cheerful environments for the elderly and those with special needs, as well as child-friendly outdoor spaces, for instance, while also conforming to the new restrictions on social life required by COVID-19?Our inability to enter public places and engage in recreational experiences as we did six months ago has placed urban planners and designers in an unenviable situation. Yet social distancing also offers urban designers an opportunity to reshape the physical environment of cities proactively and fundamentally. Urban planners and designers must still see the city as a place to unite in hope, to gather and communicate, and to cater to people's need for clamour and conviviality. To create such an urban environment, they will need to develop a new paradigm: it will not be sufficient to rely on already existing standards, guidelines, and urban design toolkits. Cities that implement social distancing measures without innovation will not become cities for people.In developing this new paradigm, urban planners and designers must avoid ideas that will create stereotyped repetition and so cause monotony and boredom. The concepts of heterotopias and contradiction will be particularly useful, as these concepts encourage the development of non-stereotypical solutions with alternative potentials, for instance through multiculturalism. Coined by Michel Foucault (1966), the concept of heterotopia involves finding "countersites" to identify where, how, and for whom differences arise and preserve themselves (Saldanha 2008). In public places, such differences will produce surprise and shock to alleviate boredom. Heterotopic urban spaces could be developed if we apply the idea of incomplete design thinking (Sendra 2015); spaces would not be completed so that other groups or individuals could

Purpose This paper focuses on the competencies and skills needed in preparing graduates of urban planning schools to meet the real-world challenges of professional practices. The present work explores the gap between skills and knowledge required to excel in the urban planning discipline and professional practices. Design/methodology/approach This research utilises a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. This study depends on collecting data from descriptive and statistical analysis based on two streams. The first comes from a survey launched among students of urban planning. The second is interviews scheduled with academics that are also practitioners. Findings The results outline the missing correlation between what Egyptian students learn in schools of urban planning and professional practices. The findings show that academics, students, and graduates share the same experiences about the education system. Academics agreed that graduates need to be more skilful rather than knowledgeable. The discussion shows that the undefined role of the planner in Egypt influenced the mismatching between the current demand and supply of competencies and skills offered by planning schools. The concluded remarks mentioned that communication skills and negotiation skills are the most crucial skills for graduates, in addition to information finding and data-processing skills. Originality/value This research has particular advantages in presenting a model of competencies as results of scanning the expectations of Egyptian students and new graduates vs professional practices. The contribution is in answering the question of what skills students of the urban planning programs should learn in order to meet the continued changes in professional practices.

PurposeOver the coming decades, the widespread application of social distancing creates challenges for the urban planning and design profession. This article aims to address the phenomenon of boredom in public places, its main influences that generate change in repetition, monotony and everyday lifestyle, whether positive, negative or both – depending on the binding and governing rules of urban shape variations and daily lifestyles.Design/methodology/approachThis viewpoint relied on literary narration to discuss the phenomenon of boredom vis-à-vis urban design and placemaking solutions in the face of social distancing. It builds its orientation by analyzing the works of nine scholars and five of their relevant theories.FindingsEvidence from previous studies helped develop three-pillar guidelines that can produce better results for post-pandemic development in the face of boredom. These pillars include recommendations for the trinity of heterogeneity for metamorphosis in urban form, changes in public life and digital transformation in a time of uncertainty on how to confront (un)seen boredom in public spaces. Practitioners should develop new insights into the relationship between people and place by reviewing existing paradigms in urban studies to avoid repetition, monotony and change in everyday life after a pandemic.Originality/valueThe added value here is in underlining boredom as one of the consequences of social distancing and lockdown applications building on the phenomenon's theorizers. The key contribution of this work is the three-pillar recommendation for confronting the boredom in public spaces that happens because of social distancing and lockdown.

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