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.
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.
Ho Chi Minh City is reshaping its role in the Southeast Asian urban network through the reorganization of industrial parks and regional integration. This is not only industrial upgrading but also a microcosm of urban strategy in the post-globalization era.
Against the backdrop of intense discussions on resource constraints and geopolitical pressures at the G7 summit, global development assistance is undergoing a transformation from fragmented projects to systemic change. This article analyzes how multi-stakeholder collaboration models are redefining development effectiveness, and explores strategic pathways for building long-term resilience at the urban and national levels.
Ho Chi Minh City is leaping from a low-end manufacturing node to a regional supply chain command center through industrial park restructuring, regional consolidation, and institutional innovation. This strategic transformation reflects a profound shift in global urban competition from single-point advantages to ecosystem competition, and also provides a new paradigm for Global South cities to participate in supply chain reconfiguration.
Hong Kong's rise to second place in the IMD Global Competitiveness Ranking not only marks its best performance in seven years but also reflects the structural advantages and resilience of Asian city-state economies in the global competitive landscape.
A recent study reveals the significant impact of garden city design on the environmental and social costs of American suburbs, indicating that the design itself, rather than just location, exacerbates carbon emissions, social isolation, and sedentary behavior. This finding has profound implications for urban strategies in rapidly urbanizing regions worldwide.
This paper explores the use of different proxy datasets (population, built-up area, nighttime lights, etc.) in defining urban boundaries, analyzing the conceptual assumptions behind them, methodological pitfalls, and their profound implications for global city comparison and governance.
African cities are driving global economic growth at an unprecedented speed and scale, with cities like Lagos emerging as centers of technology, innovation, and demographic dividends.
This review starts from the rise of Lagos and African urban agglomerations, analyzing why the center of global growth is shifting from nations to cities, and what this means for capital, governance, infrastructure, and the Global South.
A study based on 4,000 respondents in Canada and 40 urban policy issues shows that ideological divisions do exist in urban politics, but once issues are brought back to the more immediate neighborhood scale, these divisions weaken markedly. This is not only a finding in behavioral political science; it also suggests that urban governance is shifting from macro-level competition between positions to a more nuanced contest centered on spatial proximity, lived experience, and local interests.
A study based on long-term remote sensing data from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou provides rare causal evidence: demolishing informal settlements is not only an urban renewal measure, but may also serve as a tool for managing the urban thermal environment. This finding suggests that the world’s megacities are incorporating spatial remediation, climate adaptation, and land reconfiguration into a single strategic framework.
Tokyo and 55 other global cities have sent a common signal: under the combined pressures of climate risk, frequent disasters, and technological transformation, urban networks are evolving from platforms for exchange into new actors in global governance and infrastructure competition.