This paper assesses South Africa’s massive infrastructure drive to revive growth and increase employment. After years of stagnant growth, this is now facing a deep economic crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This drive also comes after years of weak infrastructure investment, widening the infrastructure deficit. The plan outlines a R1 trillion investment drive, primarily from the private sector through the Infrastructure Fund over the next 10 years (Government of South Africa, 2020). This paper argues that while infrastructure development in South Africa is much-needed, the emphasis on de-risking for private sector buy-in overshadows the key role the state must play in leading on structurally transforming the economy.

Influenced by global financial crisis in 2008, many countries around the world have realized the significance of sustainable development. And green development, as the most important pathway to sustainability, has been implemented by various countries. In this context, green development has drawn great attention from academic researchers both at home and abroad in recent years and has become an interdisciplinary-oriented research direction. As an applied basic research field for exploring the structural change of resources and environment as well as regional sustainable development, geography plays an essential role in the research of green development. Based on an intensive literature review, this article firstly summarized the connotation and analytical framework of green development. Secondly, it systematically outlined the progress of green development research from the perspective of geography and thus extracted seven themes, that is, the influencing factors of green development, assessment methods, spatial and temporal characteristics of green development, green development and industrial transformation, green transformation of resource-based cities, the effect of green development, and green development institutions and recommendations. Comments were made on the existing studies including their shortcomings. Finally, future research emphases were discussed, aiming to provide references for further study on green development from the perspective of geography in China.

The smallest administrative unit of the sixth national census-township (town) is selected as the basic unit, the population spatial distribution characteristics at the township (town) level in karst mountainous areas of northwest Guangxi are analyzed by using Lorenz curve and spatial correlation analysis method, and the influence intensity of natural factors on regional population spatial distribution is detected by using geographic detector method. The results show that: 1. the spatial distribution of population at the township (town) level has the characteristics of imbalance, showing generally significant positive correlation and certain aggregation; 2. There are significant differences in the impact of the spatial distribution of various natural factors on the population distribution. For the towns without karst distribution in the northwest and central south of the study area, the population density increases with the increase of factors conducive to human residence, but the average population density is only 79 people/km². In the towns with karst distribution in the East and south, the spatial distribution of population density and natural factors is not a simple increase or decrease relationship, but fluctuates with the change of karst distribution area. 3. The factor detection results of the geographic detector show that the altitude has the greatest impact on the spatial distribution of population. The interactive detection results show that the impact intensity of any two natural factors after superposition and interaction presents nonlinear enhancement and two factor enhancement. It can be seen that the karst mountain area in northwest Guangxi is similar to other areas. Altitude is one of the main factors affecting the spatial distribution of population, but the river network density and unique geological landform of karst mountain area have a strong catalytic effect on the spatial distribution of population. The superposition and interaction with other factors can further strengthen the impact on population distribution.

The world has complex mega-cities and interdependent infrastructures. This complication in infrastructure relations makes it sensitive to disasters and failures. Cascading failure causes blackouts for the whole system of infrastructures during disasters and the lack of performance of the emergency management stakeholders is clear during a disaster due to the complexity of the system. This research aimed to develop a new concurrent engineering model following the total recovery effort. The objectives of this research were to identify the clustered intervention utilized in the field of resilience and developing a cross-functional intervention network to enhance the resilience of societies during a disaster. Content analysis was employed to classify and categorize the intervention in the main divisions and sub-divisions and the grouping of stakeholders. The transposing system was employed to develop an integrated model. The result of this research showed that the operations division achieved the highest weight of information interchange during the response to improve the resilience of the system. The committee of logistics and the committee of rescue and relief needed the widest bandwidth of information flow in the concurrent engineering (CE) model. The contributed CE model helped the stakeholders provide a resilient response system. The final model and the relative share value of exchanging information for each workgroup can speed up recovery actions. This research found that concurrent engineering (CE) is a viable concept to be implemented as a strategy for emergency management. The result of this research can help policymakers achieve a collaborative teamwork environment and to improve resilience factors during emergency circumstances for critical infrastructures.

In this policy insight, the author lays out the context of the BRI and its role in global development. He also explains why the US should consider working with China on the BRI. The author opines on China’s possible approach and strategy to get global private investors to come on board for the massive BRI projects. He suggests that the global players can establish a third-party market cooperation and coordination mechanism to turn the BRI into a platform for win-win global collaboration.

There is a large literature on public-private-partnership, covering many different areas and aspects. This article deals with a specific but important aspect: the decision-making mechanisms to choose the management of PPP enterprises. In this sector, a suitable choice of managers is of particular importance because the persons chosen must balance the public and private interests. This is often difficult to achieve. Two new procedures are discussed, “Directed Random Choice” and “Rotating CEOs”. In each case, the advantages and disadvantages of the procedure of choosing the managers of PPP enterprises are discussed and evaluated. It is concluded that the two novel mechanisms should be seriously considered when choosing the managers of PPP enterprises.