Governing the city development through standards is a recent trend that began in the mid-2010s since the publication of standards related to smart sustainable cities and communities by the British Standard Institutions (BSI) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). However, future cities are even more complex, and the source of wicked problems exist under the cyber-physical ecosystem (physical, digital and biology). The effectiveness of such city standards in systematically governing future smart cities remains largely unknown under the digital infrastructural stress of the post-COVID-19 era. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the issues and directions in developing the Malaysian smart sustainable cities and communities standards that suit the post-COVID-19 era.