Charter Cities Podcast

Across the global south, cities are growing outwards instead of upwards. Talking to us today about why this is a bad thing for commuters, is urban planning researcher Heba Elhanafy. We dive into the episode with an overview of what the newly released planning guidelines cover, and how new city making has evolved. We hear about the three topics the planning guidelines tackle (how the global south b...

In January 2020, the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission published ‘Living with beauty’, a report that has led to a new national design guide and model design code with changes to the national policy. The policy changes replaced the word ‘good design’ with ‘beauty’, but is there more to beauty than just appearance? Joining us to discuss the beautification of urban spaces today is Dr. Sa...

Joining us in conversation today is Scott Beyer, the Founder and CEO of the Market Urbanism Report, a media company dedicated to advancing the free market’s classically liberal approach to urban issues. Tune in to hear Scott’s definition of market urbanism and how it relates to the traditional free market. He describes how his audience varies drastically from a partisan and ideological perspective...

Today’s guest is Ed Glaeser, a Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and he joins us to talk about urbanization and urban planning. Ed has written, or co-authored several books, including  The Triumph of The City , and more recently,  Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation , published this year with David Cutler. Our conversation begins on the subject of...

“The North American development pattern, the way we build our cities, creates a lot of liabilities and not enough wealth, financially, to actually take care of those liabilities.” These are the words of today’s guest Charles “Chuck” Marohn. Chuck is the founder and president of Strong Towns, as well as a professional engineer and land use planner with decades of experience. He is also the author o...

Because of the pervasive media coverage of Trumpism, Brexit, and the like, it is easy to assume that the dominant sentiment around the world is that mass migration is a new and terrifying phenomenon that could upend the world as we know it. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth, and we’ve brought Parag Khanna, founder of FutureMap, to explain why. Not only has most of the world remained...

At the beginning of 2021 Lauri Haav altered his career path from the world of tech startups to the realm of government. This might sound like an incongruous move, but the Estonian government is more advanced than most countries in terms of its level of digitization and its embracing of technology, and Lauri is currently running a program which is the first of its kind. Almost 7 years ago Estonia l...

For the past 270 years, The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been the U. K's national improvement agency. If this sounds difficult to wrap your head around, it's because it is hard to pin down exactly what a national improvement agency does. Today's guest, Anton Howes, is a historian of innovation, and his first book is Arts and Minds: How the Royal...

Today’s guest is Dror Poleg, an economic historian who explores how physical and digital systems affect human behavior, well-being, and dignity. Dror joins us on the show to talk about how technology is undermining the basic foundations of real estate’s value and how this is scrambling a lot of what we know about buildings as well as cities. Dror’s thesis is that because of the way technology has...

As we step into a new decade, it’s a good time to reflect on our expectations for the next 10 years. There are a wide variety of possible futures, some of them more plausible than others, but how do we shape a preferable future? Today’s guest believes that technological advancements could result in what he calls the ‘Roaring 20s’, with a productivity and economic boom that extends well beyond the...

The complex history of democracy and its global origins isn’t taught in school. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to self-educate. On today’s episode, we speak with David Stasavage, a Professor of Political Science and Dean of Social Sciences at the University of New York. He allows us to dip into his incredible wealth of knowledge around the history of this form of governance, as well as givin...

There has never been an immortal society. No matter how technologically advanced our own society is, it is unlikely to be an exception. In order to achieve a positive future that defies these odds, it is critical that we understand the hidden forces that shape society. To help us do that is today’s guest, Samo Burja, a sociologist and the Founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that invest...

Today’s guest is Feyi Fawehinmi, author of  Formation: The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation . Feyi joins us on the show to talk about the period of history in Nigeria that his book covers and we kick things of hearing our guest talk about his reasons for writing the book. After the Civil War in Nigeria, there was a cultural prohibition on developing a sense of history because of t...

Refugees bring skills, talents, and aspirations and can be a benefit rather than a burden to receiving societies. Realizing this potential relies on moving beyond a purely humanitarian focus to fully include refugees in host-country economies, build economic opportunities in refugee-hosting regions, and navigate the ambiguous politics of refugee protection. In today’s episode of the Charter Cities...

Our guest today is Joachim Rücker, who currently serves as a key partner in the Sustainable Development Zone Alliance. Preceded by a varied and fascinating career, Joachim served as a special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Kosovo for the duration of its transition to independence and was responsible for its economic reconstruction. He was also the Mayor of a German Indu...

Our guest today is Alon Levy, a fellow with the NYU Marron Institute. Their research focuses on public transportation and how to apply best practices from cities around the world. Our conversation is about the influence of politics and culture on the cost of building rail-based infrastructure projects across the globe and Alon sketches out many different scenarios, highlighting examples of good or...

Today’s guest is Erin McDonnell, Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. She joins us on the show to discuss her recent book  Patchwork Leviathan , which looks at the emergence of bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness, or high performing groups, within otherwise weak state administrations with a particular focus on Ghana. We unpack Erin’s findings on the causes of these bureau...

A largely unexplored counterargument to immigration liberalization is that immigrants who come from countries with worse institutions will make the institutions in their destination country worse. In  Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions,  Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell respond to this argument and today we have Alex on the show to elaborate on their...

China’s rapid rise may seem unprecedented, but its journey is oddly familiar. The question is, where have we seen this type of development before, and what does the future have in store? Joining us today to answer this is Yuen Yuen Ang, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Her research lies at the intersection of governance, bureaucracy, business and innovation and she exp...

Much talk around climate change focuses on mitigation, with far less attention paid to adaptation strategies. Matthew E. Khan, an Economics Professor at Johns Hopkins and Director of the 21st Centuries Cities Initiative, is a climate change adaptation optimist. His research focuses on urban and environmental economics. At the start of the year, he released two books, Unlocking The Potential of Pos...

Today we sit with Judd Devermont, Director of the Africa Program at CSIS, to find out Africa’s current global position. In our conversation, Judd reveals the continent’s shortcomings and touches on foreign policy and local democracy before pulling the curtain back on the many things that Africa can be hopeful for. The show opens with Judd telling us what inspired him to become an expert in his fie...

Vox co-founder, policy writer, and celebrated journalist Matthew Yglesias knows what would actually make America great: more people. Today we speak with Matthew to discuss this idea as captured in his book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger . After introducing him, we dive straight into the topic and ask Matthew to unpack how population growth will benefit the US. He then shares h...

From fleeing Benin for his pro-democracy activism to becoming a renowned Princeton professor and founding one of Africa’s most prestigious universities, Leonard Wantchekon’s life is as impressive as his economic and political research. Today we speak with Leonard and explore his story, academic work, and how he founded the African School of Economics (ASE). After sharing details about his early li...

Today we sit with Sebastian Mallaby, a successful author and esteemed Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council of Foreign Relations. He has also been a contributing columnist for The Washington Post and previously served on the editorial board. To open the show, we put Sebastian’s career into a nutshell before asking him to expand on his background. He tells us about some of his ea...

Creating and enforcing a watertight contract between two global parties is a challenging task. For starters, the world is rapidly evolving, and as a result, many contracts are in dispute. Though not unheard of, contract disputes are becoming commonplace and there is an increasing need to evolve systems. Today we talk with Mark Beer, a world-renowned buyer and once Chief Executive of the Dubai Inte...