Yuko Arai is an Urban Specialist at the World Bank’s Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice. In her current role, she works primarily on urban development projects in East Asia, including the National Urban Development Project (NUDP), City Planning Labs (CPL) Project, and the GEF's Sustainable Cities Impact Program (SCIP), or UrbanShift, in Indonesia.
Yuko leads the Global Review of Age-Ready Cities Advisory Services and Analytics Project and also co-leads the Vietnam Scaling up Urban Upgrading Project, where she manages the work on universally accessible infrastructure in urban spaces. Prior to joining the World Bank, she was a private sector urban planner based in East Asia, working in Vietnam, Indonesia, Mongolia, the Philippines and Thailand. She has experience working on spatial analytics, slum upgrading, urban development Master Plans, inclusive urban designs, land readjustment pilots, transit-oriented development, inter-city high-speed railway development, and other areas. She has also worked on capacity-building projects for local officials on urban/regional plan formulation and development control.
Yuko holds Master’s degrees in Urban Planning from the University of Cambridge, UK, and Civil Engineering (hydrology) from the University of Tokyo, Japan.
