Stand under almost any flyover in Delhi long enough, and the underside tells two different stories at once. On one side, the columns are caged behind iron grilles, the ground planted with neat rows of...

Industrial policy is back, not least in the UK, with a new Prime Minister entering office committed to a substantial reboot of the country’s economic model. Across advanced economies, geopolitical unc...

A Cultural Tourism–Oriented Perspective Crete is the largest island in Greece, positioned at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and has historically served as a strategic point along major ...

For most of its modern history, economic geography has been a discipline of the rear-view mirror. We have been very good at explaining why places get stuck. Path dependence, lock-in, the weight of inh...

Innovation policy is often designed as if geography does not matter. Public agencies often allocate public financial aid to innovative firms based on project quality and firm characteristics, but rare...

Why do some regions recover from violent conflict more slowly than others? And how long do the economic effects of conflict persist across space? These questions remain central to regional development...

In 2008, something cracked in China’s growth model. The global financial crisis hit export-oriented manufacturing hard: factories slowed, orders collapsed, and millions of migrant workers suddenly fou...

The importance of ports in the elaborate systems that enable the global mobility of goods has been a critical focus for nation-states and for globalised business interests. As a result, port developme...

From Village to Region At first glance, Houhai looks like a familiar story of regional development in China. A small fishing village on the southern coast of Hainan becomes a booming surf-tourism dest...

Economic history and background The discovery of gold in 1886 triggered the ‘Gold Rush’ on the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The Gold Rush was characterized by a boom in gold exports, and by the end ...

Foundations of Devolution in Kenya Devolution refers to the constitutional transfer of administrative, political, and fiscal power to lower levels of government (Counties in Kenya). The Kenyan 2010 Co...

The two cities of Macau and Zhuhai, located on the south-east coastline of China, have long been entangled. Both were administered by Xiangshan County for centuries before Macau came under Portuguese ...

Regions are often treated as spatial units where environmental policies are implemented and evaluated. In practice, they also function as implementation systems, in which responsibility is carried for...

Participation has become a central promise in development and regional planning. Policymakers and international bodies increasingly argue that involving citizens in shaping development leads to better...

Across the world, regions are shaped not only by their present-day borders but also by layers of past governance, political ambition, and entrenched planning legacies. Nowhere is this more visible tha...

In the high-stakes game of 21st-century geopolitics, the map of the future is being drawn on the blueprints of the past. Nowhere is this clearer than in Kyushu, Japan. The recent opening of the Taiwan...

Tropical storms, such as typhoons, hurricanes, and cyclones, are among the Earth’s most powerful weather systems. They are also born over warm oceans now overwhelmed with our plastic waste. As a resea...

South Africa’s post-apartheid development landscape remains profoundly shaped by its inherited spatial and institutional architecture. Derived from my PhD study, Bell (2025) argues that underdevelopme...

In 2020, a merger of the counties of Troms and Finnmark in northern Norway was implemented as part of a nationwide regional reform. Unlike some mergers that took place at the time, this merger was not...

Canada’s expansive Prairie region comprises the century-old provinces of Manitoba (est. 1870) and Saskatchewan and Alberta (est. 1905). However, this super-region, one-third the size of Canada (1.96 m...

In recent years, industrial strategy has returned to the centre of political and economic debate. Governments across advanced economies are once again asking how they can shape growth, support innovat...

In recent years, industrial strategy has returned to the centre of political and economic debate. Governments across advanced economies are once again asking how they can shape growth, support innovat...

In recent years, industrial strategy has returned to the centre of political and economic debate. Governments across advanced economies are once again asking how they can shape growth, support innovat...

Ghana is often celebrated as one of Africa’s most stable democracies—peaceful transitions of power, competitive elections, and a vibrant civic sphere (Gyimah-Boadi 2009; Paller 2019). Yet beneath this...

Policymakers often rely on familiar indicators such as GDP, employment rates, and education levels to assess regional well-being. Yet these metrics tell only part of the story. Human flourishing, enco...

Economic diversification involves shifting away from a dominant sector to cultivate multiple industries that generate diverse income streams. Relying heavily on a single resource sector increases an e...

One moment in 2025 has felt like a rare stroke of cosmic luck. In May, I was honoured to serve as the Early Career Plenary Speaker at the opening session of the Regional Studies Association (RSA) Annu...

The notion of ‘region,’ as interpreted by planners and policymakers, is frequently administrative and formal, delineated by jurisdictional boundaries and quantified through statistical metrics such as...