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This study examines the social and economic experiences of female food vendors in the informal economy in urban Ghana using a particularized analysis to challenge prevailing opinions that women working in the informal economy inevitably experience social oppression and economic marginalization.

Synthesizing data from ethnographic field observation of female street food vendors in urban Ghana with past ethnographic research, this study focuses on the cultural, historical, political, social, and economic particularities of the Ghanaian context to understand the experience of female urban street food vendors.

Ghanaian women working in informal food vending in urban environments in the Southern regions of Ghana experience a myriad of social and economic benefits including: strong social support networks, access to entrepreneurial skills and startup capital; heightened social status, resulting from loyal customers and community recognition; empowerment through financial autonomy; as well as pride in providing economic resources for children. These social and economic experiences serve as counterevidence to the dominant perspective that women in the informal economy experience social oppression and economic marginalization.

This research contributes qualitative data regarding the social and economic support systems established by women in the informal food economy in Ghana. Furthermore, it emphasizes that development agencies and policymakers understand the importance of these contextual dynamics in developing policies aimed at the informal economy.

This paper evaluates the level of the digital economy in Chinese cities based on digital industrialization and industrial digitalization. The research focuses on the effects of spatial mechanism of the urban digital economy on the quality of firms’ exported products.

The authors use the principal component analysis method to evaluate the level of China’s urban digital economy, and spatial metrology to measure the spatial effects of the digital economy on product quality.

The findings suggest that the urban digital economy can expand the quality of firms’ exports. The digital economy has spatial dependence, spatial spillover and spatial heterogeneity on product quality. At the same time, the spatial effect has a significant nonlinear effect and threshold effect. Further decomposition shows that industrial digitalization is the core factor of enterprises’ export products quality, and the micro-mechanism of this impact is mainly manifested in optimization of resource allocation.

The innovation of this paper is reflected explicitly in exploring the quality upgrading of export products from the background of the digital economy, providing a reference for the improvement of China’s export trade competitiveness and the cultivation of a trade power. The authors studied two different mechanisms (specialization division of labor and optimization of resource allocation) to explain the spatial imbalance of export product quality to provide empirical support for enterprises and government departments to formulate quality upgrading policies accurately.

Challenges from the urban–rural disparity immensely burden the world's progress fulfilling Sustainable Development Goals and the goals' central promise, particularly for developing countries experiencing rapid structural change and urbanization. A knowledge gap lies between the epistemology of urban–rural disparity and the practice of integrated urban-rural development. This paper aims to provide a new approach to bridge the knowledge gap based on the recent Chinese experience.

This qualitative research reviewed major economic and multidisciplinary studies regarding urban-rural development and the growth-equality tradeoff. Chinese experience is employed to showcase concrete challenges from the urban–rural disparity and how the proposed approach works for urban-rural integration.

Theoretical and practical approaches with urban bias largely fail to counter the challenges. Building on China's recent practice probing beyond urban bias, IFPRI (2019) proposes the term rurbanomics with a highlight of equalized urban-rural economic partnership, whereafter Zhou and Chen (2021) enrich the term into a conceptual framework. This paper further improves rurbanomics as a new viable approach to integrated urban-rural development under the overarching goal of common prosperity. The approach prioritizes driving forces in the economic, demographic, eco-environmental, social institutional and technological aspects for the policy community to leverage. Long-term mechanisms are decerned to link urban-rural integration to common prosperity.

China has leveraged ingredients of the rurbanomics approach in the political deployment to integrated urban-rural development. However, the application of this approach is yet to be adapted with local heterogeneities and live up to application's potential. Long-term mechanisms recommended by the rurbanomics approach will need to be carried out. Future improvements will need substantial theoretical extension and micro-level empirical studies.

This paper streamlines the epistemological shreds regarding pursuits, challenges, global experiences and theoretical approaches of urban-rural development. The paper also develops rurbanomics to navigate urban-rural integration, Sustainable Development Goals and common prosperity. By decerning long-term mechanisms in the Chinese case accordingly, this paper provides clues for other economies to employ the new approach.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential of tax increment financing (TIF) as a viable financial mechanism for urban regeneration programmes in Nigeria. This is with a view to engendering a sustainable, productive and competitive urban land market towards enhancing the economic development of the country.

This paper adopts a desk-based study approach and review of secondary literature on urban regeneration and TIF to examine the usefulness of TIF for funding local infrastructure development. It then examines the key requirements for the successful application of TIF as a financial instrument for urban regeneration in an emergent economy like Nigeria.

A number of key requirements for a successful TIF programme particularly in the context of an emergent economy are identified. These are: a functional urban land market with well-developed and documented market indices on performance measurement to serve as reliable benchmarks for investors; an established land use planning system consisting of clear rules and effective decision-making processes; an active capital market that is accessible to institutional and private developers; a viable tax administration system and most importantly an efficient institutional framework with clearly defined formal property rights and sound enforcement mechanisms to monitor contractual agreements and to police deviations.

This paper represents a pioneering attempt at examining the prospects of the application of TIF to urban regeneration in the specific context of an emergent Sub-Saharan African country.

The aim of this chapter is a discussion of the post-modern shift towards symbolic economies as a substantial factor of transformation of urban public space. It argues that the shift towards a cinematic mode of production, in which production, distribution and consumption of images assume a dominant role in the social organisation, calls for a related cinematic urbanism analysing the prime role of cities as factories in the global system of symbolic production. The city of Florence is assumed as an exemplar case study, examining the way the symbolic productive chain develops towards the real and virtual domains. I argue that Florence represents an archetype of the cinematic city, anticipating since the renaissance the tendency towards global symbolic production as a dominant sector of its urban economy.

The purpose of this paper is to present the background to the development of the World Towns’ Framework, developed in June 2016 at the inaugural World Towns Leadership Summit in Scotland. The paper also provides an academic underpinning to the four pillars of the agreement; a unique sense of identity and place, economy, leadership and citizenship and environment. It ends with a call to action for practitioners, policymakers and organisations providing support to people in places who want to contribute to the development of the Framework and adopt it.

The paper is divided into four sections. The first section gives the background to the development of the World Towns Framework. The second section publishes the World Towns Framework in its entirety. The third section builds an evidence-base for the components or pillars of the World Towns Framework, based upon work undertaken by the think tanks and academic partners involved in its development. The final section sets out a call for action – explaining how the Framework can be further developed and utilised.

The paper contains three main contributions. It articulates a new narrative for towns, neighbourhoods and city districts in responding to contemporary urban challenges; it shapes a new urban agenda for these urban places and it asserts the need for new alliances and approaches essential for a strong competitive economy, which is more inclusive of towns and smaller places, combined with a fairer, more equal society.

The evidence base for the research is limited to the work that has been carried out by the academic institutions and think tanks that supported the development of the World Towns’ Framework.

The practical implication of the World Towns Framework are a shared understanding of how towns and smaller places can engage in management, development and marketing practices that will lead to a stronger economy and fairer society.

The focus upon place uniqueness and identity, a more equitable economy, a greener and cleaner environment and stronger place leadership and citizenship can lead to better, fairer and more liveable places.

This is the first attempt to develop a World Towns Framework to shape urban change outside of cities and metropoles.

With the development of economy and the progress of science and technology, the function of Luoyang city is constantly enriched and expanded. The city is no longer a simple area for people to live in. The function structure of the city is affected by the external factors and is constantly expanding. Urban logistics is one of the important influencing factors. To more comprehensively and accurately understand the status and role of logistics network space in urban planning, the characteristics and development law of urban logistics structure from the theoretical point of view are analyzed in this paper with Luoyang City as the research background. The city logistics function is determined as one of the main factors affecting the economic growth of the city is determined through the literature search method, consulting professionals and other research methods. Urban road planning and design are the focus of the study; the planning and development of urban logistics road network in Luoyang City are compared and analyzed. In full consideration of the necessity of the optimization of the urban logistics network space, the preliminary optimization scheme design and suggestion of Luoyang logistics is introduced. At the end of this paper, the sustainable development and the status of the future urban logistics function are analyzed and prospected. Continuous research and analysis of multiple subjects and angles are still needed.

This study aims to investigate the factors affecting urban economic development in emerging economic market countries and to provide a new research perspective on urban skyscraper construction.

An empirical analysis based on a difference-in-differences (DID) model is conducted using data of urban data in China that expand into developed markets from 2003 to 2018.

The results of the spatial heterogeneity test indicate that the construction of skyscrapers has a significant promotional effect on the eastern city's economy. In contrast, it has a significant inhibitory effect in the central and western regions. Further findings demonstrate that the construction of skyscrapers can influence urban economic development by promoting industrial agglomeration, especially when the transmission effect of the diversified accumulation of tertiary industry is more prominent. The expansion analysis shows that skyscrapers have increased the level of trade in the city, and the impact on trade has an optimal height.

This paper focuses on the economic and trade effects of skyscrapers, and the optimal height of skyscrapers needs to be discussed in more depth, which is also the next problem the researchers need to study.

The government should attach importance to and promote the construction of urban skyscrapers, and do a good job in overall planning and design. The city should formulate preferential policies in land, taxation, finance, system and other aspects to increase support for urban skyscraper construction and promote local economic development.

This study focuses on the impact of urban skyscraper construction on the economic and trade development of cities in developing countries, which not only complements the relevant research on the economic effects of urban skyscraper construction, but also helps to provide reference for the sustainable development of urbanization in many developing countries.