The Maloti-Drakensberg (MD) is the largest and highest-elevation mountain system in southern Africa. Covering 40,000 km2 and reaching 3500 m, the MD provides a range of ecosystem services (ES) to the entire southern African region—benefitting diverse users and extending well beyond the mountains. Rapid socioecological change threatens the provision of ES and presents multidimensional challenges to sustainable development. However, the continued land degradation and persisting socioeconomic problems indicate that development policy has not been effective in tackling these issues.

Property development around transit stations has been viewed by many governments as a considerable way of financing public transportation. However, despite mounting evidence of the positive relationship between transport investment and proximate land value, the stakeholder relationship in enabling complex property–transit development has received relatively scarce attention. In this study, we analyze the railway financing strategies in two cities (Shenzhen and Hong Kong) connected by the first cross-border high-speed rail (HSR) network in China.

Urbanization processes are some of the key drivers of spatial changes which shape and influence land use and land cover. The aim of sustainable land use policies is to preserve and manage existing resources for present and future generations. Increasing access to information about land use and land cover has led to the emergence of new sources of data and various classification systems for evaluating land use and spatial changes.