In 2020, the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) had a global impact on normal daily life. The Government of Malaysia officially declared the Movement Control Order (MCO), an official national lockdown, to reduce the virus’s spread. In the face of the unprecedented global health pandemic, Malaysia had struggled to protect its citizens’ welfare and livelihoods, particularly in the hardest-hit rural areas. Therefore, this study uses the sustainable livelihood approach (SLA) focusing on the aspect of financial assets and government intervention to enhance understanding on the vulnerability in rural area’s livelihood. Pasir Puteh, Kelantan was identified as the rural area for this study. The analysis was performed on a questionnaire survey based on convenience sampling of 62 respondents. Cross table analysis and a correlation test were used to examine the livelihood of the rural area concerning the financial assets, government intervention and vulnerability. The findings indicated that the MCO had a substantial impact on the rural area regarding the vulnerability toward the financial assets, such as employment status, job loss, increasing living costs, and an insufficient response to rural economic challenges. At the same time, there is no substantial government intervention in the welfare of rural areas. According to the results, the study concluded that the government should set up training courses to assist in the long-term recovery of rural areas due to the enforced lockdown, which has adversely affected rural livelihoods.

The Malaysian landscape planning projects are dynamic, subjective, and fasttracked, causing multiple risks. Hence, risk management practice is needed to manage risks. However, the risk management process is not managed comprehensively despite the considerable capability of project practitioners to predict, analyse, and treat project risks, causing the project to underperform. This study has investigated the current risk management process in Malaysian landscape planning projects. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with twenty-four landscape architect practitioners from Klang Valley. The information from the interviews was analysed utilising the content and thematic analysis method. The six steps of the risk management process were not managed following the suggested methodology, whereby the procedure was carried out in an ad hoc, unstructured, and incomplete manner. This action has caused extensive risk impact which affected project performances. This finding will teach project practitioners to evaluate their current practice and recommend the adoption of formal risk management in landscape planning projects.

Malaysia is currently undergoing heterogeneous land-use allocation and conversion in the city centre, resulting in leapfrog urban expansion to the suburban areas. Identification of the growth pattern from land-use conversion and urban growth has defined the limits of development, which could be a feasible way to alleviate the severity of these challenges. The research aims at the expansion factor for the built-up pattern of Kuala Lumpur (KL) and Penang City Centres. The objective of this research is to create a model on the new knowledge of urban built-up patterns generated from Landsat image data and comparison with built-up area from the change in land use, limitation of plot ratio, and floor space. The assessment of land-use changes is crucial in deciding the outcome for future development while considering the completion of committed development. This mechanism will help in the analysis of the data gathered using a remote sensing approach, which involves identifying the built-up area in KL City Centre using satellite images and examining the impact of land use patterns and varied plot ratios. In detail, the focus is directed towards a factor that influences the change of built-up area and development force. This will provide knowledge of Landsat images for the built-up area in urban expansion and the built-up limitations allocated by the local authority.