Ronald Wall

Prof. Dr. Ronald Wall holds the ‘Chair of Economic Development of the City of Johannesburg’ at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is also the Head of the Urban Competitiveness and Resilience department at the IHS, Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Wall is a qualified urban planner and economic geographer. He received his PhD in economic geography from the Erasmus School of Economics, EUR. His research concerns global, regional and urban economic development, on topics e.g. regional integration, economic competitiveness, sustainable cities, world city analysis, smart cities, food security, inequality, renewable energy and happiness economics. Currently his focus is on African city development - particularly the relationship between urban economics, urban planning and urban design. He is the principal researcher and author of the upcoming UN-Habitat report ‘State of African Cities 2018: The Geography of African Investment’, a partnership between UN-Habitat and IHS-Erasmus University Rotterdam.