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 outcomes. Yet inside participatory initiatives, the practical realities are often far more complex than the rhetoric suggests. My research on Ghana’s Decent Work Programme (GDWP) (Arko, 2019) offers a […]
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 than in cities of the global south where the informal economy forms the backbone of everyday life. In Johannesburg, the inner city’s pavements and public […]
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 Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plant in Kumamoto Prefecture is not merely a business transaction; it is a signal event in […]
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 researcher in coastal China, I watched these immense storms and asked a simple, troubling question: could they be picking up this pollution and moving […]
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 underdevelopment conditions, stemming from apartheid’s racial capitalist project, created spatial and institutional constraints in Gauteng’s periphery. These conditions limited equitable urban and industrial transformation, and persist today (Ashman, 2022; 2023). Understanding […]
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 based on an initial voluntary agreement between the respective county councils. A consultative referendum held in Finnmark two years […]
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 million sq. km.), faces three significant challenges: economic diversification, deteriorating infrastructure, and climate change. But do present-day decision-makers draw on insights from the region’s collective past? A past […]
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 democratic success lies a stubborn paradox: political authority remains profoundly centralized. Despite more than three decades of multi-party elections and over four decades of decentralization reforms, Ghana’s […]
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, encompassing happiness, health, purpose, virtue, relationships, and financial stability, is increasingly recognized as a vital complement to traditional economic indicators (VanderWeele et. al, 2020). However, existing […]
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 economy’s vulnerability to the global commodity market and amplifies the risk of unemployment. South Africa’s North West Province is bordered by Botswana, Limpopo, the Free State, and the […]
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) Annual Conference. Delivering the keynote alongside high-profile academics – Professor Elisa Ferreira (former European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms), […]
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 population density, GDP, and land-use classifications (Swami & Hemrajani, 2023; Choudhary, 2021). However, for many communities in the Thar Desert of western Rajasthan- such as the Jogis, Lohars, Bhils, […]
Our reliance on cars is one reason why domestic transport is the UK’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 2024). Using alternatives, like walking and cycling, can cut these emissions quickly (Brand et al., 2021), much quicker than even the quickest shift towards electric vehicles. Yet we continue […]
Around one-quarter of the world’s labour force works in agriculture. In many low- to middle-income countries, labour in agriculture is one of the highest contributors. As WOTR notes in its article, women are often engaged in agricultural activities, but their work remains invisible. Stokes and Ghosh argue that this invisibility is best understood through the […]
Regional studies often treat the region as a sub‑national unit, and it spans from neighbourhoods to cross‑border macro‑regions. In Asia, this elasticity is intensified by language. Words that look equivalent on paper rarely carry identical histories, politics, or scales. This short piece reflects on the Chinese notion of quyu (区域) and how it travels between […]
Why do some firms weather crises while others disappear? And what role do productivity and geography play in determining who survives? These questions are at the heart of understanding how economies recover from downturns. Productivity is one of the main engines of long-term growth and competitiveness. A central lesson from economic research is that competition […]
Rural areas are vulnerable to climate change but also contribute to it through their close ties to the natural environment through agriculture, forestry, tourism and resource extraction. Unsurprisingly, then, the local level is considered one of the key areas where reaction to climate change should be conceived (European Commission 2021); however, their responses are often […]
The Association of South-East Asian Nations adopted a master plan in 2016, which aimed at increasing connectivity by 2025. The Master Plan (MPAC 2025) focuses on physical, institutional and people-to-people connectivity. This connectivity needs to be achieved by focusing on developing key areas such as sustainable infrastructure, digital innovation, people’s mobility, logistics and regulatory practices. […]
Earlier in 2025, the UK government announced a commitment to reduce spending on disability benefits by restructuring entitlements and eligibility to various health-related benefits. It claims through its Pathways to Work, papers that it seeks to reduce economic inactivity across the UK ‘…[so] that everyone who can realise the benefits of work is expected and […]
In the UK, the Covid-19 pandemic was marked by strong spatial differences in the strictness and duration of government-mandated lockdowns. The average number of weeks spent in strict lockdown was 50% higher in urban local authorities than in rural ones. The marked increase in working from home that ensued, largely facilitated by the use of […]
Tools play a crucial role in research and the visual representation of regions. In this piece by Dr Jakob Eder, we explore mapping (graphicacy) and discuss its application and potential improvements for presenting research. Let’s face it: as geographers, we know that maps are a powerful tool to communicate findings, but many maps out there […]
Devolution has been at the core of the UK government’s initiatives to reduce regional inequality across the country. The Conservatives’ ‘Levelling up’ agenda was built around it, and Labour’s plan to ‘Power Up Britain’ also relies on the empowerment of local and sub-regional authorities and communities, based upon an analysis that areas have been ‘held […]
Place leadership has come to be seen as the ‘missing factor of the regional development puzzle’ (Sotarauta et al, 2017), but how such leadership operates in environments of conflict and contestation is still poorly understood. Using Northern Ireland as an illustrative case, recent research has sought to better understand how place leadership dynamics manifest when […]
On November 25th 2024, the Ontario government officially passed Bill 212, which became the Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act, 2024. This legislation greenlit the proposal to implement a framework for bike lanes that require the removal of a traffic lane. For the city of Toronto, this meant the removal of existing bike lanes on […]