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 inherited industries and institutions: these ideas gave us a powerful grammar for diagnosing why a coal town stays a coal town long […]
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 research, especially in places where war has reshaped long-run economic activity (Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003; Blattman and Miguel, 2010). Looking into this question, Kešeljević, […]
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 destination; the government steps in to restore order, and a state-owned company is created to regulate the industry and align it with wider […]
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 […]
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 innovation, and address deepening regional inequalities. For decades, however, much of industrial policy has rested on a powerful but often unquestioned assumption: that economic growth is […]
The UK government can meet some of its biggest challenges by combining mayoral devolution with its mission-led approach. Empowering local leaders to deliver on national missions will mean giving them greater control and bigger budgets. In the UK, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has had a rocky first year in office. With opinion polls tumbling and […]
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 […]
Development History: A Multi-Dimensional Region Centred on Shanghai In the Chinese context, as urban spatial patterns and governance systems evolve, the concept of “region” increasingly exhibits multi-dimensional and dynamic characteristics, especially prominent in Shanghai and its surrounding areas. Shanghai is one of China’s four municipalities directly under the central government and a core city of […]
In a world grappling with pressing challenges like economic volatility, social inequality, and climate change, traditional development strategies, largely focused on economic growth, often fall short. As these issues intensify, there is a growing need to explore alternative solutions that embrace inclusion and sustainability. One promising avenue is territorial development, a concept that has long […]
The voting behaviour in Nigeria has been attributed to many factors, such as clientelism, vote buying, party identification, the performance of the government, and ethnicity. Most of these studies have been done at a macro level. There were limited studies done on the rural dwellers. According to the World Population Review (2024), the Nigeria population […]
Cities and regions around the world face enormous challenges—environmental degradation, resource scarcity, economic instability, and social inequality. To tackle these issues, we need bold, transformative approaches to sustainability. Enter the circular economy: a framework that rethinks how we use materials and energy, aiming to reduce waste and consumption. But for the circular economy to truly […]