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The highly contagious coronavirus and the rapid spread of COVID-19 disease have generated a global public health crisis, which is being addressed at various local and global scales through social distancing measures and guidelines. This is coupled with debates about the nature of living and working patterns through intensive utilisation of information and telecommunication technologies, leading to the social and institutional acceptability of these patterns as the “new normal”. The primary objective of this article is to instigate a discourse about the potential contribution of architecture and urban design and planning in generating knowledge that responds to pressing questions about future considerations of post pandemic architecture and urbanism. Methodologically, the discussion is based on a trans-disciplinary framework, which is utilised for conceptual analysis and is operationalized by identifying and discoursing design and planning implications. The article underscores relevant factors; originates insights for areas where future research will be critically needed, through key areas: a) Issues related to urban dynamics are delineated from the perspective of urban and human geography, urban design and planning, and transportation engineering; b) Questions that pertain to socio-spatial implications and urban space/ urban life dialectics stem from the field of environmental psychology; and c) Deliberations about new environments that accommodate new living/working styles supervene from ethnographical and anthropological perspectives. The article concludes with an outlook that captures key aspects of the needed synergy between architectural and urban education, research, and practice and public health in a post pandemic virtual and global world.

The aim of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis between Islamic and conventional banks in terms of whether Islamic banks was more or less resilient/risky than conventional counterparts to the pandemic shock. It also examines the role of capital in improving the performance and stability within the two banking systems.

This study uses 82 banks from MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region for periods across 2011–2020, and employs a dynamic panel data approach to examine the resilience within both banking systems during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The results show that the Covid-19 pandemic has a negative impact on conventional banks' stability. However, Islamic banks performed better and were less risky than conventional ones. Banks with high-quality capital are more effective at controlling their risks and improving their performance during the pandemic.

The results offer important financial observations and policy implications to many stakeholders engaging with banks. Actually, the findings of this study facilitate to the stakeholders and bankers to have an alluded picture about determinants of risk and performance. The results can be used by bankers’ policy decision-makers to improve and enhance their consideration for risk management, taking into consideration the type of banking systems.

Compared to the various studies on the stability of Islamic and conventional banks, researchers have not sufficiently addressed the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on risk and performance. Moreover, none of these studies has examined if Islamic banks was more or less resilient/risky than conventional counterparts to the pandemic shock. This leads the authors to identify the similarities and differences between two types of banks in the MENA region in a pandemic shock context.