Direttrice, Prospettive Regionali
Dr. Amira Mansour monitors regional economic belts and city clusters across the Middle East and Africa. She provides insights into regional cooperation and cross-border urban networks.
A study covering 140 global cities reveals that the pattern of urban expansion matters more than scale in determining cooling energy demand. Disorderly horizontal sprawl drives up energy consumption, while compact vertical development offers structural advantages. This is not merely an energy issue—it is a strategic watershed for urbanization in the Global South.
The 2026 nationwide home-buying friendliness ranking reveals a deep urban restructuring: small Florida cities are replacing Silicon Valley and the Bay Area as new population magnets. This is not a simple housing market report, but rather a microcosm of urban competition, regional rebalancing, and long-term strategic choices in the United States.
China's sports-themed towns are not only a poverty alleviation policy but also an experiment in integrating spatial governance with rural revitalization during the urbanization process of the Global South. This article reinterprets this phenomenon from the perspectives of urban strategy, long-term trends, and civilizational evolution.
Chinese universities continue to close the gap, while federal political intervention deepens. American research universities are undergoing a profound structural crisis. This is not merely an educational issue—it signals a shift in the global center of knowledge production, one that will reshape the fate of cities and national competitiveness in the decades to come.
New research on the coordination between population and transportation in the Pearl River Delta reveals that transportation investment may exacerbate core-periphery imbalances. This article interprets this from the perspective of global city competition, pointing out that coordinated development requires governance reforms that go beyond the logic of infrastructure.
According to the United Nations' *World Urbanization Prospects 2025*, 45% of the global population lives in cities, double the figure from 1950. This number is not just a statistical milestone, but also signals a fundamental transformation in global civilization structure, economic geography, and governance order.
As cities become centers of global economic, climate, and technological change, the OECD's urban development agenda reflects a deep governance paradigm shift. From the perspective of international organizations, this article analyzes the restructuring of cities' roles in national strategies and the global system.
A new study covering 140 cities has revealed the profound impact of urban three-dimensional growth patterns on cooling demand. At the intersection of global warming and urbanization, urban form is becoming a strategic variable that determines future energy burden, economic resilience, and global competitiveness.
Brookings Institution's latest research points out that public safety and economic development are inseparable. This article, from the perspective of global urban governance, analyzes the limitations of law enforcement-first strategies and proposes a new path for public safety centered on economic opportunities.
Based on the study of the three major urban agglomerations in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, this research analyzes the spatiotemporal patterns and driving mechanisms of urban-rural integration in China, and explores its implications for the restructuring of the global urban system.
Based on the historical geology and urbanization study of Woldia town in Ethiopia, analyze the unique path of African urbanization—military-trade driven, geological constraints and environmental costs—and explore its implications for the long-term strategies of cities in the Global South.
Traditional urban heat risk assessment methods can no longer cope with increasingly complex heat risks. Based on a recent Nature comment article, this paper proposes five key shifts to move cities from static vulnerability maps toward dynamic, context-sensitive assessment and action frameworks.
This article analyzes the deep evolution of global city influence evaluation systems, pointing out that traditional economic and financial indicators are no longer sufficient to measure a city's true status in the 21st century. Cultural vitality, livability, digital connectivity, and explorability are becoming new standards, reflecting a structural shift in the global city system from the concentration of power to experiential value.
Based on Oliver Wyman's comprehensive ranking analysis of 1,500 cities worldwide, Asian cities are rising across the board in business vitality, technological innovation, and connectivity, while traditional Western powerhouses face fierce competition. Emerging Asian cities, particularly mid-sized cities in China and India, are becoming new engines of global investment and economic growth.
In a warming world, enhancing local adaptive capacity to reduce health hazards related to extreme weather is crucial. A study focusing on China highlights the key roles of institutions, infrastructure, and cities in building climate resilience.
The budget deficit debate in Chicago reveals the structural predicament of America's older cities in the face of global competition. This article analyzes from a long-term strategic perspective why traditional spending cuts and tax increases have become ineffective, and why the "growth-first" policy has become the key to urban competitiveness.
A study on dynamic monitoring of urban land surface in developing countries based on remote sensing and machine learning, using Karachi as an example, reveals how technology changes the logic of urban governance and provides a new paradigm for sustainable development of cities in the Global South.
An international commentary based on a Nature paper, analyzing how the social-ecological-spatial system framework compensates for the neglect of the built environment in traditional urban sustainability research, and revealing its profound implications for global urban governance and long-term strategies.
Based on a systematic review of 630 papers, this study reveals the structural shortcomings of the social-ecological system framework in neglecting spatial dynamics under urbanization and proposes a social-ecological-spatial system framework to reshape the analytical foundation of urban sustainability science.
A new study shows that broad neurodevelopmental spectrum predicts children's educational outcomes better than traditional classifications. From the perspective of global urban strategy, this article analyzes how this finding can drive cities to redesign education systems to embrace neurodiversity, becoming key to future talent competitiveness.