The growing trend of urban city development requires various infrastructure investments, including water supply, electricity, sanitation, transportation, and other supporting facilities. In facing this challenge, many Asian countries experience significant constraints, particularly on the issues...

In many Asian countries, land acquisition is one of the main challenges for infrastructure development which delays the completion of projects and lowers the rate of return of infrastructure investment. This paper investigates the potential application of the land trust scheme, which Japan has...

Distribution of tax revenue among municipalities - which are constitutionally official federal entities in Brazil - is highly unequal vis-à-vis their demands of public services. Given conurbation processes and intense urbanization in the second half of the past century, some municipalities...

Social infrastructure has endured a long period of neglect in most developed and emerging countries, with chronic underinvestment exposed by the coronavirus crisis 2020. The financial crisis 2007/08 led to a slow revival of economic infrastructure policies, and a growing involvement of...

The population of the planet is constantly growing, people are moving to the cities. Recently, more and more interest is being given to smart cities as a guarantee of at least comfortable living of citizens, as a maximum - an ultramodern autonomous city with artificial intellect, anticipating...

A citizen-centric view is key to channeling technological affordances into the development of future cities in which improvements are made with the quality of citizens' life in mind. This paper proposes City 5.0 as a new citizen-centric design paradigm for future cities, in which cities can be...

One of the main challenges in low-income Asia and the Pacific countries is users' willingness to pay for water services. In contrast, investors and private operators in the water sector prefer a high rate of return. This has often led to the failure of public-private partnerships for water...

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of information and communications technology (ICT) not only for the economy but also for human well-being. However, the investment gap in ICT infrastructure has been growing and is expected to reach more than $30 billion by 2040. We argue that one...

The financing of the Romanian agriculture and rural space through the SAPARD program created the technical and financial premises necessary for the process of accession to the European structures. Thus, the funds developed through the SAPARD Agency have directly contributed to the economic and...