ABSTRACT This paper analyses the linkages of the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) in the metropolitan areas of Mexico and identifies two regionally differentiated ‘locational-pull factors’: the city’s industrial base and amenities. These factors have been reinforced by the deconcentration of the Mexican urban system. The industrial base locational-pull factors plays an important role in cities involved in international trade with the United States/Canada, while the pull of amenities drives a different path associated with tourist and cultural enclaves. In Mexico, software and creative services (such as advertising) exhibit strong linkages within creative sectors and with other non-creative industries.

ABSTRACT As a result of the speed and direction of rural depopulation, between 1986 and 2006, 59% of rural settlements were deserted in Iran’s second most populous province, Khorasan Razavi. In Iran as a whole, 37% were abandoned. A Moran’s I = 0.56 suggests that the desertion of villages in Khorasan Razavi followed a clustered pattern, with the highest rate of depopulation being in rural areas covering less than 5% of the province’s land area. Macro-economic and policy causes are outlined, as are some of the consequences and ways to promote more balanced and equitable development.

ABSTRACT An analysis of the response of highly urbanized Russian regions to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic shows that regions with a high urban population share and many small and medium-sized businesses were most vulnerable; that regional differences were largely determined by the severity of health-related restrictions on business and social activity; and the extent to which regionally differentiated economic support measures and the adoption of digital technologies, new delivery methods, and a focus on new sectors stabilized aggregate supply and demand. Examination of the evolution of a resilience index permits identification of four paths: adaptively stable, vulnerable labile-adaptive, remission-adaptive and low-adaptive economies, and it reinforces the interpretation of the main drivers of regional resilience.

ABSTRACT The public policy field generally answers the question as to what a government should or should not do. In the case of Palestine, the Water Reform Process has however been characterized by a gap between the design of policies and their implementation that reinforced a status quo and has severe negative impacts on water service policymaking. This gap derives from geopolitical realities created by the Israeli Occupation including the full control of Area C and of 85% of the water resources along with restrictions on Palestinian extraction and transport of their own water resources. A consequence and cause of this formulation–implementation gap is a fragile water governance structure and an undermining of the two-state solution.

ABSTRACT In the last two decades, the 2008 Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) virus and the 2016 algal blooms crises have placed the Chilean salmon industry at risk and tested the capacity of its governance mechanisms to solve environmental and economic contradictions and ensure the industry’s continuity and its sustainability. Although in the 2008 crisis the state redefined mechanisms of property, control and access to natural resources to strengthen the resilience of the salmon industry, the lessons learned by the system and the community between one crisis and the next were not enough to avoid a new crisis. Chile’s existing governance mechanisms are reactive and not proactive and, therefore, their capacity to lead the industry towards long-term sustainable practices is flawed.

ABSTRACT Karl Polanyi provides a rich repertoire of concepts to build a critical understanding of the world of globalization and alternatives to the status quo. In reviewing two recent collections around the work of Polanyi, we show some of the concepts that might be developed in terms of ‘using Polanyi’. This would include his inspired double-movement concept and the way he dealt with non-capitalist societies. Polanyi is as relevant for the so-called developing societies as he is for the advanced industrial societies where he has garnered most attention.

ABSTRACT Through case studies of two South African metropolitan municipalities, Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay, the paper explores the way in which the economic advantages at the disposal of local government, referred to as rents, are distributed according to the power relations in cities. The city governance regimes are distinguished in the way that power is structured, the balance between formal and informal institutions, the nature of the rents allocated, and their developmental and spatial outcomes. Cape Town’s growth-oriented model, founded on intimate relationships between developers and the political elite, exercised centralized control over land rights, which were allocated to entrenched property interests. The weaker clientelist regime in Nelson Mandela Bay relied on a diminishing pool of procurement rents to sustain a decentralized patronage-based system. The paper uses a political settlements framework to understand how the configuration of power in each city is sustained by a particular distribution of rents, mobilized through informal institutions, which in turn impact the structuring of the bureaucracy. The spatial and developmental impacts of the case studies indicate that despite the better development outcomes of Cape Town, neither regime specifically advantages the urban poor. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which political settlements theory can better account for bureaucratic autonomy and impacts on the space economy.

ABSTRACT This paper reviews the antecedents and future potentials of a transcontinental high-speed railway from the Indian Ocean to the Bering Strait and Alaska. The original ideas date from the 19th century, but have regained relevance in the context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Apart from increasing connectivity between Eurasia and America and developing economic complementarities between different parts of the world, a high-speed railway would open prospects for exploiting the agricultural and tourism potential of Siberia, mitigating economic and environmental risks in different regions, and raising standards of living. However, like a century ago, key barriers to the project remain a complicated physical geography, low population density and continuing geopolitical tensions.

ABSTRACT An important aspect of economic reforms in Russia and China over the last several decades has been the transformation of their public finances and, in particular, the revision of the status and the capacities of the two countries’ regional budgets. In search of effective approaches to the division of revenues and expenditures between national and subnational authorities, the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China have chosen different paths. While China’s central authorities have delegated more responsibilities and provided more resources to local governments, Russian regions’ role in the budget system have diminished. These differences are outlined and explained.

ABSTRACT This commentary uses a geographical approach to make three points about the multiscalar distribution of risk and opportunity associated with ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ in the context of China–Africa relations. First, although geopolitical narratives are often inaccurate, they affect geopolitical perceptions and, in turn, the distribution of debt-related risk. Second, just as geopolitical dynamics affect domestic politics, domestic political dynamics influence the geopolitics of debt. Finally, the use of debt as a geopolitical tool is not limited to lenders or governments. A variety of actors – from opposition parties to media outlets – can deploy debt to recalibrate power relations across states as well as within them.