A quarterly magazine “MakingIt Industry for Development N.24”

As UN-Habitat’s Joan Clos says in his interview in this issue, “Urbanization and industrialization are two transformative processes for wealth generation.” For several centuries, industrialization has been a key driver of urban development.

The complementarity between urbanization and industrialization is set to take on a new dynamic with the unfolding of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Launched in 2013, the BRI involves China underwriting billions of dollars of infrastructure investment in countries along the old Silk Road routes linking it with Europe and Africa. The BRI is likely to provide ample opportunities for industrial growth within the context of urban development.

How will cities along the Belt and Road forge an inclusive and sustainable urban-industrial development? This issue of Making It looks at the challenges arising when industry meets the city in the era of the Belt and Road Initiative.

This issue features;

• Cities of the Silk Roads: past, present and future, Peter Fankopan sees the Belt and Road Initiative as the latest in a long line of similar projects across similar regions, and looks for the lessons that history can reveal
• The undeniable relationship between urbanization and industrialization – interview with Joan Clos (UN-Habitat)
• China aims to build a global infrastructure network, Belt and Road infrastructure projects, planned and completed (March 2017)