Sports mega events increasingly take place in the metropolises of emerging economies. As a city-marketing tool, these events are said to make the host cities more visible in the international competition for foreign and domestic investments. Infrastructural upgrades and fast tracking of urban development projects, as well as giving focus and legitimation to urban policy makers, are supposedly the further benefits of hosting mega events. This recalls the 'Festivalisation of Urban Policy' hypothesis by Häußermann and Siebel, which describes the instrumentalisation of large-scale cultural and sports events to support image building and to catalyse urban development in European and US cities. Given that socioeconomically very heterogeneous nations increasingly host these events, it is necessary to extend the debate and to investigate whether the political, economic and social effects in these countries of the Global South-conventionally labelled as the developing world-can be explained with the festivalisation hypothesis: Are the urban development effects qualitatively comparable and, if so, are they more strongly or weakly pronounced than in the Global North? The 2010 International Federation of Football Association World Cup in South Africa is a fitting example to explore the characteristics and dynamics of mega events in the host cities of the Global South.

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The importance of critical infrastructures and strategic planning in the context of extreme events, climate change and urbanization has been underscored recently in international policy frameworks, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Sendai -HABITAT 2016). This paper outlines key research challenges in addressing the nexus between extreme weather events, critical infrastructure resilience, human vulnerability and strategic planning. Using a structured expert dialogue approach (particularly based on a roundtable discussion funded by the German National Science Foundation (DFG)), the paper outlines emerging research issues in the context of extreme events, critical infrastructures, human vulnerability and strategic planning, providing perspectives for inter-and transdisciplinary research on this important nexus. The main contribution of the paper is a compilation of identified research gaps and needs from an interdisciplinary perspective including the lack of integration across subjects and mismatches between different concepts and schools of thought.

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