Publications

As computing power becomes central to geopolitical rivalry, cloud infrastructure is increasingly framed as critical to national security, economic resilience and technological sovereignty. Current debates often focus on global competition – especially between the U.S. and China – highlighting strategic investments, export controls and infrastructure diplomacy abroad. Yet far less attention has been paid to the domestic territorial transformations that make such geopolitical projection possible. This paper argues that national strategies for AI and cloud dominance depend on the reorganization of land, energy and regulatory systems to sustain large-scale computation. Using a geopolitical ecology framework, we examine how the U.S. and China build national computing power as a strategic economic and military resource. In the U.S., cloud firms operate as state-aligned actors, drawing on fragmented regulatory authority, public subsidies and national security discourse to expand into rural and peri-urban regions. China pursues a more centralized strategy through its East Data, West Computing initiative, redistributing infrastructure to inland provinces under state-led development goals. Through comparative regional analysis, we show how domestic infrastructural expansion underpins geopolitical rivalry, producing new forms of territorial governance and socio-environmental inequality. Far from immaterial, the cloud is grounded in enclosure, extraction and the spatial foundations of techno-industrial power.

Despite the rising number of green finance policies, the socioeconomic determinants shaping them remain largely unexamined. Drawing from the literature analysing the relationship between regulation, market development and institutional economics, we contend that green finance policy adoption is driven by both market-based and institutional factors. Using a survival analysis approach to understand the levers influencing green finance policy adoption across 188 countries from 2000 to 2019, we find that exposure to the fossil fuel industry predominantly drives the initial issuance of green finance policies. The positive effect of fossil fuel commercial financing on the adoption of green finance policies exists in countries with high and medium climate change awareness levels. Meanwhile, in countries with a low climate change awareness level, fossil fuel government subsidies drive green finance policy adoption. Our study also highlights the role of the financial industry as one of the key actors in the policy cycle of green finance policies via two pathways: (i) affecting financial stability through financing oil and gas companies on primary financial markets and (ii) developing a market for sustainable finance products.

1. Cities are on the frontline of climate and urban challenges, and must lead efforts to build resilience in housing, services, and infrastructure in the wake of growing climate risks and post- pandemic vulnerabilities.

2. Five key areas for action – affordable housing, reliable municipal services, collaborative governance, equitable energy transitions, and resilient water management – have been identified, with real-life examples of solutions offered. 

3. Urban resilience depends on inclusive policies, local innovation, and global partnerships. By sharing knowledge and acting collectively, cities can drive sustainable change and build a more equitable and climate-resilient future. 

Whilst the idea of infrastructure has animated scholarship for the past twenty years at least, there remains a need for more expansive understandings of what infrastructure is, and what it can be. The speed, scale and material disruptiveness with which many of the infrastructural megaprojects that constitute China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been developed both underpin and validate this need. Whilst the effects of the BRI are both manifold and diffuse, all of them expose situations of infrastructural complexity. Rather than considering the BRI simply as the imposition of new material infrastructures on a landscape, we posit the value of recognising the BRI as an infrastructural layer that comes into contact, competition and collision with pre-existing infrastructural formations. The BRI is an infrastructural vortex that causes the “infrastructural commons” to come to the forefront of analysis. As a heuristic, the infrastructural commons captures the processes by which once shared resources and public or common goods become infrastructuralised in ways that bring about the (re)negotiation of meaning and value. These processes are acutely felt in South and Southeast Asia, where sedimented patterns of religion and belief shape the ways in which the BRI is engaged with and understood. Surprisingly, the sacred dimensions of these infrastructural commons remain unstudied, despite there being evidence to suggest that it is the transformative power of the sacred, rather than of secular modernity, that shapes and structures everyday lives. In this vein, the articles that constitute this special issue explore the sacred dimensions of the BRI’s infrastructural commons through a series of case studies from South and Southeast Asia.

In Singapore, most land is state-owned, with the state generally issuing leasehold estates via state leases of not more than 99 years , depending on the intended land use. Naturally, the value of a leasehold estate, which erodes over time as the lease approaches the end of its term, is a key component of the premium charged for lease renewals, or the tax imposed for permission given in relation to a development that would increase the value of the land. By law, the state valuation of leasehold land is prescribed by a leasehold relativity table colloquially known as ‘Bala’s Curve’ or ‘Bala’s Table’. Since its adoption in 1948, however, the underlying assumptions and discount rate inherent to the curve have not been disclosed. This paper aims to deconstruct or reverse engineer Bala’s Table to derive the best fit model of the curve. Doing so allows policymakers to evaluate whether the model parameters align with prevailing economic realities, and if not, modify them to reflect the market and more accurately value leasehold estates for calculating taxes and premiums.
 

This paper explores how ecological responsibility becomes distributed across the surfaces and volumes of the city. Our focus is urban mosquito management – specifically, the management of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the vector by which dengue and several other diseases are transmitted to humans – and the governance strategies deployed in Singapore to manage breeding sites and mosquito outbreaks. Whilst the governance of nature in Singapore is usually undertaken by the state, the effective management of mosquitoes requires responsibility for ecological management to become distributed throughout the city. Residents are expected to assume responsibility for surficial cleanliness and the removal of stagnant water in which mosquitoes can breed, whilst pest management companies are contracted to conduct atmospheric fogging to control mosquitoes’ movement throughout volumetric space. Altogether, this distribution demands that residents and the private sector partner with the state to manage urban nature. The relative inefficacy of these efforts reveals a spatial politics of urban mosquito management. These politics raise questions about the relationality of ecological responsibility, and trouble the logic of distributed governance that defines the multispecies city.

This study adds to the growing literature on mobile platforms by examining the performance of the Singapore MaRTy (SMaRTy) in conducting mobile micrometeorological measurements along a designated route in an urban park in Singapore, reflecting a pedestrian walking experience. The main objective of the study was to calculate the sensor lag for the mobile climate measurements: Air Temperature (TA), and Relative Humidity (RH) of SMaRTy along a designated route in an urban park in Singapore based on data from fixed stations (HOBO sensors) in two significant synoptic meteorological periods during the Northeast and Southwest monsoons. Statistically significant regression models were obtained for the two study periods. For the TA, the regression models for the Southwest monsoon yielded higher R2 (0.85–0.99) and lower Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) (0.34–0.57) than those for the Northeast monsoon (R2: 0.09–0.90, and RMSE: 0.53–0.71). However, diurnal variations in cloud cover affected the regression models of SMaRTy, with more cloudy conditions resulting in weaker correlations. Overall, results suggest that mobile climate measurements via SMaRTy along a designated route, when corrected for lag, yield accurate data that can be applied toward urban climate analysis.

By examining China’s refugee policies from 1949 to 1982, this article demonstrates how the Chinese state redefined “return” and “refugee” to serve shifting political objectives. While China is often perceived as a source, rather than a host, of asylum seekers, it hosted over 320,000 displaced migrants—primarily ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia—during the Cold War. Through a systematic discourse analysis of 382 People’s Daily articles, we identify four state narratives—diaspora, diplomatic tool, ideological sanctuary, and legal duty—that structured how China labeled displaced migrants, interpreted their sentiments, and determined their settlement. These models evolved dynamically: from the 1950s to the late 1970s, China framed displaced migrants as both diasporic returnees and victims of foreign persecution to bolster its legitimacy. During the Cultural Revolution, they were recast as Maoist returnees seeking ideological redemption. By 1978, the state invoked international legal norms by portraying them as “refugees” to secure global assistance amid the Indochinese refugee crisis. We argue that China’s refugee discourse functioned as a flexible political instrument that unsettled rigid distinctions between voluntary and forced migration. Our findings advance a constructivist understanding of migration categories and offer a historically grounded critique of refugee politics beyond Western-centric Cold War narratives.

This case is set in February 2025, when Chang Hwee Nee, CEO of the National Heritage Board (NHB), a statutory board under Singapore’s Ministry of Culture, Community & Youth (MCCY), reviewed the newly published 2024 survey conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) and OnePeople.sg, which revealed that trust in racial and religious groups had increased significantly from the previous year, and felt optimistic about the journey ahead. Through the case discussion, students will be able to understand the Singapore model of multiculturalism, learn about the different models of multiculturalism, and compare and contrast governmental approaches to multiculturalism. 

The case delves into how the Singapore National Heritage Board (NHB) came to put up two elements – hawker culture and the kebaya – for inscription on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of Humanity. The nomination process for hawker culture involved inputs from researchers and was driven by NHB, as well as another government agency and a merchant body. Through the process, the communal dining experience at hawker centres was highlighted as a defining hallmark of the element. As for the kebaya, the nomination process was a joint effort involving the governments of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Activities like documentation and research, as well as promotion and transmission, came to the fore when the respective governments compiled the joint nomination document. As a result of the joint exercise, it was found that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” when each country brought forth its respective expertise. Even as both nomination processes had culminated in a successful inscription of the nominated elements, the NHB leadership team pondered: What had been the main difficulties and benefits of collaborating with regional counterparts? And should it be more proactive in identifying more heritage elements for inscription?

This case is intended for use in multidisciplinary courses involving elements of heritage and tourism studies, international relations, and cultural geography. Students who have successfully examined the case should be able to analyse the possible consequences if the inscribed elements were to be commoditised; evaluate the correlation between a country’s soft power and its ability to secure ICH inscriptions; and investigate how inscribed ICH elements facilitate place-making for a country.