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The onset and aftermath of COVID-19 can be understood as an extreme event within the context of New York City, in terms of urban planning and design, public health, and the cross-section of the two. Over the course of a few months since early March, 2020, infection rates, illness, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19 swept through New York rapidly. It also became apparent early on that people were not being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus equally, nor was COVID-19 spreading over a level-playing field. In this commentary, we examine what role COVID-19 played in a “social biopsy” of long-standing structural inequity in New York City, to reveal a deep, metastasizing tumor underneath the extreme wealth. We tell the story of the historical context in low-income public and non-profit housing and urban planning in New York City leading up to the pandemic’s outbreak, how the structural inequity was built into place over time by design, how the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted our understanding of equitable and sustainable New York City for New Yorkers, and ways that the pandemic has reinforced our individual and collective sense of uncertainty in the future and distrust in a common good. We then discuss how we can recover, restore and rebuild from the urban planning and public health perspectives, for New York City and beyond. Rebuilding will require reimagining a new normal, and we suggest unique but tried-and-true, complementary and collaborative roles for community stakeholders.

The government’s vision is oriented towards reforming the urban map and increasing the urban communities’ ability to face current and future urban development challenges. However, it is becoming increasingly aware that it cannot achieve this by acting alone. This in turn poses an important question about good urban governance, and appropriate management mechanisms that may enable the achievement of the strategic goals. In this context, the government adopted a “National Housing Strategy”, which aims to transfer the current situation of the housing sector in Egypt and encourage the private sector to provide more diversity of patterns of holdings in this sector. However, to what extent the government can develop this approach into an effective public–private partnership framework that ensures a strong private sector response in the delivery of affordable housing is still unclear. Accordingly, this research aims to develop a conceptual framework to guide decision-makers on how the state can apply urban development partnership as an integrated approach to better development of affordable housing in Egypt.