Recently, the government of Ethiopia has been engaged in modernizing the trans-regional Ethio-Djibouti railway infrastructure using the Belt and Road Initiative. This railway corridor has been serving as the main get way for the landlocked Ethiopia to the port. This article creates an insight about the implications of the Ethio-Djibouti railway corridor by exploring the question: what kinds of urban form and morphological changes evolved due to the railway corridor? To examine the impact of this railway corridor, the article employed stratified sampling and multiple criteria intermediate cities selection method. Accordingly, four (Bishoftu, Mojo, Adama, and Dire Dawa) intermediate cities were selected as case study. The article points out that the railway corridor conceived different kinds of linear urban centers around stations. The identified four intermediate cities attract industries and logistic centers. Those industries, logistic centers, and new railway stations often established at the periphery of intermediate cities resulted labour influx from rural and nearby small urban centers and urban expansion that caused a rural-urban continuum of ribbon settlement and strengthen trade gate way for the landlocked Ethiopia that caused trans-regional integration.

This research aims to build an appropriate leadership model for regional heads in mitigating disasters due to climate change that is occurring in Papua. Papua Island is one of the islands that is included in disaster-prone areas, namely earthquakes, flash floods, tidal floods and landslides. This disaster occurred due to Papua’s geological conditions in the form of activity on the Indo-Australian plate (southern part) and the Pacific plate (north-eastern part). Exploitation of nature carried out by companies and communities themselves in a particular area has an impact on the balance of the natural ecosystem. So far, disaster management has only focused on emergency response. Aid movements coordinated by ordinary people also focus more on raising aid for emergency situations. In fact, comprehensive disaster management includes before, during and after a disaster occurs. So a combination of leadership styles is needed that must be carried out at each phase of a disaster so that the right model can be produced. The results of this research found that the leadership model of regional heads in mitigating climate change in Papua is in accordance with the disaster management cycle with leadership styles, and traditional Papuan leadership styles. This combination is called a collaborative leadership model for disaster management in Papua. It is hoped that by implementing this model, climate change disaster mitigation can be effective.

With the rapid economic growth, the concept of digital economy and sustainable development has gradually become the main task facing our country. This paper constructs the evaluation system of the development level of digital economy and the comprehensive index of regional sustainable development by the entropy weight method, uses the two-way fixed effect model to explore the influence mechanism of digital economy on the sustainable development of the Yangtze River Delta region.

The aim of this study is to determine how bank diversification affects bank stability. To this end, it examines data of 136 commercial banks operating in 14 MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries observed from 2005 to 2021, using the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) panel data regression analysis. The selected countries are Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates. The main results point to the enhancing effect of income diversification on bank stability. Our results underline the “Bright Side” of banking income diversification in the MENA region. However, this stabilizing income diversification effect is not always maintainable. The results also point to a non-linear relationship between interest/non-interest income and financial stability, suggesting that higher diversification reduces risk. We use a dynamic panel threshold model to determine income diversification thresholds that stabilize banks in the MENA region.

This study analyzes the role of innovation in the development of smart cities in Latin America. It focuses on how emerging technologies and sustainable strategies are being integrated into urban planning and urban development. In this sense, this study seeks to contribute to the smart city literature by answering the following research questions: (i) To what extent smart city innovative initiatives have been addressed in Latin America? and (ii) To what extent scholars have addressed sustainable innovation strategies in the smart city literature? To this end, this is the first comprehensive bibliometric analysis of smart city research in Latin America, with a structured and systematized review of the available literature. This methodological approach allows cluster visualization and detailed analysis of inter-node relationships using the VOSViewer software. The research comprises 4 stages: (a) search criteria; (b) selection of documents; (c) software and data extraction; and (d) analysis of results and trends. Results indicate that studies on the Latin America region began to develop in 2012, with Brazil as a leader in this field and the tourism sector as the most relevant. Nevertheless, strong international collaboration was identified in co-authoring studies, underscoring a cooperative approach to solving common urban problems. The most active research area is technological innovation and sustainability, with focus on solutions for urban mobility, quality of life and smart governance. Finally, this work underlines the need to continue exploring the integration of technology in urban development, suggesting an agenda to guide future research to evaluate the sustainability and long-term impacts of smart city initiatives in Latin America. From the policy perspective, smart city initiatives need to be human-centered to boost smart solutions adoption and to guarantee long term local impacts.

Political identity is of special significance to the political construction and social development of contemporary China. Returnee lecturers are an important part of the university teaching team and an important force in training socialist builders with Chinese characteristics. An empirical survey was conducted on 35 returnee lecturers in universities in Jinhua area by means of questionnaires and interviews. The results show that the political identity of the returnee lecturers is generally good, but there are some problems, such as political party identity, national identity, institutional identity and interest identity need to be improved. As a result, factors such as gender, political profile and length of stay abroad have a significant effect on the political identity of returnee lecturers. The paper concludes with some initiatives, such as strengthening ideological and political education, improving remuneration and promoting career development.