Public participation is a critical aspect in the planning, also spatial planning. Its role is changing dramatically as it is present not only in social development but also tackles issues connected with cultural, educational. The most important element in participation is the will to do it – to engage in the process of planning the of life, of new urban communities, and how it is taking place in the planning process at different levels/ scales. There is a need to strengthen the public participation in the Egyptian context. Consequently, there are many cases in public participation related to the different levels (metropolitan, city, action area), connected to urban issues, besides, the sectoral issues related to economic development and societal needs. Thus, there is still a gap between existing national policies and their implementation at local level. The important question is how to achieve the local needs with strategies prepared on upper-level agencies. The main problem, in addition to the environmental issues is the regional disparities, poverty illustrated by low human development index. The research aim is to determine general framework and rules of citizen participation in Egypt by illustrating many cases from Egyptian context, and to examine the process and assess their effectiveness and the paper will end with the policy changes.

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Land management is one of the crucial issues for urban planning, which relates to the city's dynamic and also has a major effect on urban regeneration by creating a high demand for changing land use, especially in the previously developed land in urban and rural areas. In the frame of sustainable development, urban planners focus on Brownfield redevelopment to achieve effective mixed-use principles. As a matter of fact, The Regional and Urban Planning has an important part to play in tying opportunities for the developmental urban axis in integrated transport development and economic provision, as it can help concentrate development along and around rail and bus corridors rather than new roads. Therefore, there is a need for more than urban regeneration approaches to deal with urban development issues in the existing lands as urban corridors; as it works as the outcome of the sustainable development concept and phenomena has a relation to land use optimizing and management according to the urban regeneration principles. And one of the most effective tools is transitoriented development along the urban corridors. The research problem discussed in this paper is a strong conflict on land use and land management policies and strategies that make land use changing ineffective and leading to delays in the urban regeneration process. The research aim is to determine the land use management policy to transform the existing urban development corridors according to urban regeneration principles.

Addressing risks and pandemics at a country level is a complex task that requires transdisciplinary approaches. The paper aims to identify groups of the European Union countries characterized by a similar COVID-19 Resilience Index (CRI). Developed in the paper CRI index reflects the countries’ COVID-19 risk and their readiness for a crisis situation, including a pandemic. Moreover, the study detects the factors that significantly differentiate the distinguished groups. According to our research, Bulgaria, Hungary, Malta, and Poland have the lowest COVID-19 Resilience Index score, with Croatia, Greece, Czechia, and Slovakia following close. At the same time, Ireland and Scandinavian countries occupy the top of the leader board, followed by Luxemburg. The Kruskal-Wallis test results indicate four COVID-19 risk indicators that significantly differentiate the countries in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the significant factors are not only COVID-19-related factors, i.e., the changes in residential human mobility, the stringency of anti-COVID-19 policy, but also strictly environmental factors, namely pollution and material footprint. It indicates that the most critical global environmental issues might be crucial in the phase of a future pandemic. Moreover, we detect eight readiness factors that significantly differentiate the analysed country groups. Among the significant factors are the economic indicators such as GDP per capita and labour markets, the governance indicators such as Rule of Law, Access to Information, Implementation and Adaptability measures, and social indicators such as Tertiary Attainment and Research, Innovation, and Infrastructure.

Land use plan is a fundamental pillar for shaping the future of urban development plans to deal with national and regional issues. There is a merger between land use objectives as a resource and general development objectives to define clearly the importance of a developmental system for comprehensive land-use planning. Most regional plans do not follow integrated system of land-use planning without considering urban settlement in creating the vision and goals of their policies. As a result, most sectoral development plans are created in isolation without systematic consideration of standards and development tools of urban development. Consequently, this study attempts to use ecological footprint to evaluate regional land use in their current situation and in the stages of preparation of urban plans. Therefore, the comparison to human development index in order to figure out the stages clearly to use the proper land use planning approach, using an example of Visegrád countries.