POPULARITY
25 episodes with charter cities institute
3 episodes with charter cities institute
2 episodes with charter cities institute
2 episodes with charter cities institute
4 episodes with charter cities institute
This episode features a conversation with Wyoming State Senators Dan Dockstader, Brian Boner, and Chris Rothfuss, hosted by Carl Peterson of the Charter Cities Institute. The discussion centers on the concept of Freedom Cities, first introduced in national discourse by former President Donald Trump, and how Wyoming—home to abundant federal land and cutting-edge energy projects—might serve as a testing ground. The senators provide a deep dive into the economic profiles of their districts, ranging from tourism and agriculture to energy production and higher education. A recurring theme is the challenge and opportunity posed by federal regulations, particularly around nuclear energy, and how local innovation can be empowered by streamlining policy frameworks. The episode provides a timely, insightful look at how state-level leadership can drive national conversations around economic dynamism and regulatory reform.
Dan Boeckner's in town, so he joins us to talk about the ongoing trade chaos, the new plan by the Charter Cities Institute to make a sparkling tech enabled immigration detention centre / San Francisco competitor on a very controversial Navy Base, and finally we look at the just-released immigration white paper, where Sir Keir Starmer KC Human Rights Lawyer and Saviour of Sensible Politics comes juuuuust close enough to quoting Enoch Powell to raise an eyebrow. Get tickets to Dan's show in London on Sunday here! https://wegottickets.com/event/655273 Get more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here! *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo's tour dates here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows *TF LIVE ALERT* We'll be performing at the Big Fat Festival hosted by Big Belly Comedy on Saturday, 21st June! You can get tickets for that here! Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)
"One of the biggest strengths is the past of cities."Are you interested in the connection of economics and cities? What do you think about superstar cities and their agglomeration? How can we utilise cities' pasts as their strengths? Interview with Mark Lutter, Founder and Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, agglomeration in superstar cities, innovation and technology, the urban history, and many more. Mark Lutter is the Founder and Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute, a non-profit focused on building the ecosystem for charter cities, and the Founder and CEO of Braavos Cities, a charter city development firm. He earned a PhD in economics from George Mason University and has been featured in the New Yorker, Financial Times, and the Atlantic. Charter cities, innovative urban projects with superior legal systems, aim to revolutionize governance in the 21st century. Mark has worked globally on their development, engaging in fundraising, strategy, and planning to attract investment and drive economic growth.Find out more about Mark through these links:Mark Lutter on LinkedInMark Lutter website@MarkLutter as Mark Lutter on XCharter Cities Institute websiteCharter Cities Institute on LinkedIn@CCIdotCity as Charter Cities Institute on X@ccidotcity as Charter Cities Institute on InstagramCharter Cities PodcastBraavos Cities websiteConnecting episodes you might be interested in:No.090 - Interview with Professor Matthew McCartney about the connection between economy and citiesNo.294 - Interview with Erick A. Brimen about new city building and governance structureNo.317RWhat was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available.I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Are you interested charter cities? Summary of the article titled Building resilient cities: The role of charter cities in promoting resilient urban development from 2024, by Eva Klaus and the Charter Cities Institute, published on the Charter Cities Institute website.This is a great preparation to our next interview with Mark Lutter, the founder and executive director of Charter Cities Institute in episode 318 talking about charter cities and their role in urban futures. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how the charter cities concept can enhance urban resilience. This article introduces charter cities as new cities with new rules and the opportunities within climate adaptation and sustainable growth.Find the article through this link.Connecting episodes you might be interested in:No.074R - Resilient urban planning: major principles and criteriaNo.090 - Interview with Professor Matthew McCartney about the connection between economics and citiesYou can find the transcript through this link.What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available.I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Are you interested in the connection of economics and cities? What do you think about superstar cities and their agglomeration? How can we utilise cities' pasts as their strengths? Trailer for episode 318 - interview with Mark Lutter, Founder and Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, agglomeration in superstar cities, innovation and technology, the urban history, and many more. Find out more in the episode.Episode generated with Descript assistance (affiliate link).Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Mark Lutter. Lutter is an urban development expert known for his work on charter cities—new urban areas aimed at fostering economic growth and progress. He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Charter Cities Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to building the ecosystem for charter cities, as well as the CEO of Braavos Cities, a charter city development company. He holds a PhD in economics from George Mason University, and a BS in mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park. His interests span progress studies, governance, social dynamics and institution-building, with a belief that creating new cities can spark cultural and economic advancements similar to historical periods like the Renaissance or the Dutch Golden Age. He has been published or quoted in outlets like the Financial Times, The New Yorker, and The Chicago Tribune. Lutter and Razib discuss diverse topics, from the difficulties of the Prospera project in Honduras, to the possibility of developing San Francisco's Presidio into an Asian-style super-city. They explore the various pitfalls and possibilities faced when attempting to create new jurisdictions in developing nations in the Caribbean and Latin America, along with the major obstacles to urban innovation in the USA. Lutter outlines the economic case for charter cities, along with the normative values that undergird their creation as bastions of liberty and laboratories of cultural experimentation. Finally, they discuss the Trump administration's openness to the idea of the “Freedom City” in the Presidio, along with local opposition to the project.
In PX129 our guest is Jeffrey Mason of the Charter Cities Institute. Jeffrey joined CCI as a Researcher in 2019. His research interests include urban economics, structural transformation, special economic zones, and technology ecosystems. He has worked on policy advisory projects in Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and Honduras, among other countries. Prior to joining the Charter Cities Institute, Jeffrey worked as an MA Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Maryland and an MA in economics from George Mason University. His writing has been featured in publications including City Journal, Works in Progress, Investment Monitor, Quartz Africa, and The American Mind. The Charter Cities Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to creating the ecosystem for charter cities, founded on the idea that a fresh approach was necessary to tackle humanity's most pressing challenges, such as global poverty, climate change and rapid urbanisation. CCI believe charter cities—new cities granted a special jurisdiction to create a new governance system—are that solution. By improving governance through deep regulatory and administrative reforms, charter cities can help accelerate economic growth in developing countries and lift tens of millions of people out of poverty. Details at https://chartercitiesinstitute.org In podcast extra / culture corner, Jeff recommends the book ‘Outsourcing Empire: How Company-States Made the Modern World' by Andrew Phillips and JC Sharman https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691203515/outsourcing-empire Jess recommends the TV series Ted Lasso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Lasso Pete recommends the book ‘The Diaries of Fred Williams 1963 - 1970' https://www.amazon.com.au/Diaries-Fred-Williams-1963-1970/dp/0522871208 Episode PX129 was released on 31 March 2025. PX is proud to be a member of the Urban Broadcast Collective.
In PX129 our guest is Jeffrey Mason of the Charter Cities Institute. Jeffrey joined CCI as a Researcher in 2019. His research interests include urban economics, structural transformation, special economic zones, and technology ecosystems. He has worked on policy advisory projects in Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and Honduras, among other countries. Prior to joining the Charter Cities Institute, Jeffrey worked as an MA Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Maryland and an MA in economics from George Mason University. His writing has been featured in publications including City Journal, Works in Progress, Investment Monitor, Quartz Africa, and The American Mind. The Charter Cities Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to creating the ecosystem for charter cities, founded on the idea that a fresh approach was necessary to tackle humanity's most pressing challenges, such as global poverty, climate change and rapid urbanisation. CCI believe charter cities—new cities granted a special jurisdiction to create a new governance system—are that solution. By improving governance through deep regulatory and administrative reforms, charter cities can help accelerate economic growth in developing countries and lift tens of millions of people out of poverty. Details at https://chartercitiesinstitute.org In podcast extra / culture corner, Jeff recommends the book ‘Outsourcing Empire: How Company-States Made the Modern World' by Andrew Phillips and JC Sharman https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691203515/outsourcing-empire Jess recommends the TV series Ted Lasso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Lasso Pete recommends the book ‘The Diaries of Fred Williams 1963 - 1970' https://www.amazon.com.au/Diaries-Fred-Williams-1963-1970/dp/0522871208 Episode PX129 was released on 31 March 2025.
In PX129 our guest is Jeffrey Mason of the Charter Cities Institute. Jeffrey joined CCI as a Researcher in 2019. His research interests include urban economics, structural transformation, special economic zones, and technology ecosystems. He has worked on policy advisory projects in Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and Honduras, among other countries. Prior to joining the Charter Cities Institute, Jeffrey worked as an MA Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Maryland and an MA in economics from George Mason University. His writing has been featured in publications including City Journal, Works in Progress, Investment Monitor, Quartz Africa, and The American Mind. The Charter Cities Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to creating the ecosystem for charter cities, founded on the idea that a fresh approach was necessary to tackle humanity's most pressing challenges, such as global poverty, climate change and rapid urbanisation. CCI believe charter cities—new cities granted a special jurisdiction to create a new governance system—are that solution. By improving governance through deep regulatory and administrative reforms, charter cities can help accelerate economic growth in developing countries and lift tens of millions of people out of poverty. Details at https://chartercitiesinstitute.org In podcast extra / culture corner, Jeff recommends the book ‘Outsourcing Empire: How Company-States Made the Modern World' by Andrew Phillips and JC Sharman https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691203515/outsourcing-empire Jess recommends the TV series Ted Lasso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Lasso Pete recommends the book ‘The Diaries of Fred Williams 1963 - 1970' https://www.amazon.com.au/Diaries-Fred-Williams-1963-1970/dp/0522871208 Episode PX129 was released on 31 March 2025.
Welcome to the Freedom Cities Podcast, a short-form series by the Charter Cities Institute & the Frontier Foundation. In each episode, we sit down with innovators, entrepreneurs & thought leaders to explore how Freedom Cities can drive innovation and economic growth.In our first episode of the Freedom Cities podcast, Joshua Abbotoy discusses his innovative approach to building rural communities in Appalachia, focusing on economic decentralization and the integration of modern amenities. He shares his vision for the future of these areas, the journey that led him to this work, and the potential for new cities that cater to the evolving needs of residents. Joshua emphasizes the unique opportunities presented by Appalachia's natural beauty and historical context, and how these can be leveraged for sustainable growth and community building.
Mark Lutter is the founder and executive director of the Charter Cities Institute.Find Mark:https://x.com/MarkLutterhttps://chartercitiesinstitute.org/Mentioned in the episode:https://www.palladiummag.com/2025/01/17/build-the-presidio-freedom-city/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jake-auchincloss.htmlhttps://zanzalu.org/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.fromthenew.world/subscribe
A privately owned development outside the Kenyan capital is attracting residents and businesses with its strict rules and modern infrastructure. Turn into Tatu City on the outskirts of Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and it feels like entering a different world. Digital content creator Valerie Akoko moved here two years ago. "I have never seen Tatu City dirty," she says. "The rules state that the estate should be cleaned as regularly as possible. I have been here two years, there has never been an accident in Tatu City…because there are rules." Situated on 5,000 acres, Tatu City aspires to be what its name suggests: a city, privately owned, that its designers hope will eventually have a population of 250,000. It already is home to 88 businesses that employ 15,000 people. In sub-Saharan Africa, champions of the idea hope that new-city developments can address the continent's urbanization conundrum: While the growth of cities has rolled back poverty elsewhere, this region has largely been an exception. History suggests that as people move into cities, productivity increases, wages rise, exports grow, and a country gets richer. But in Africa, urbanization has not unleashed such economic transformation. Weak property rights and political tensions can make the problem worse. Still, the case for building new cities, complete with new infrastructure, seems compelling. The Charter Cities Institute, a Washington-based non-profit, argues that, done properly, such projects could drive growth, create jobs, and “lift tens of millions of people out of poverty.” The institute sees Tatu City as a model. Tatu may provide clues as to what makes a new city successful. Experts agree that the private sector must play a role in African urbanization, saying African states are too fiscally constrained to fill the investment gap themselves. Tatu City also appeals to businesses and residents with its transparent governance structure and services that are often lacking elsewhere in Kenya, including its own water supply and energy grid. It falls under national law but can set its own rules on matters like traffic and, crucially, what kind of houses can be built, with all plans requiring approval from Tatu's management. This article was provided by The Associated Press.
"You are the product of the city you grew up in, but you can accurately shape it and move to different cities." Are you interested in existential hope? What do you think how are you influenced by the city around you? How can we use foresight to peak into the future? Interview with Allison Duettmann, the president and CEO of Foresight Institute. We talk about her vision for the future of cities, longevity, utilitarianism, cloud-first cities, urban diversity and changing behaviours, and many more. Allison Duettmann is the president and CEO of Foresight Institute. She directs the Intelligent Cooperation, Molecular Machines, Biotech & Health Extension, Neurotech, and Space Programs, Fellowships, Prizes, and Tech Trees, and shares this work with the public. She founded Existentialhope.com, co-edited Superintelligence: Coordination & Strategy, co-authored Gaming the Future, and co-initiated The Longevity Prize. She advises companies and projects, such as Cosmica, and The Roots of Progress Fellowship, and is on the Executive Committee of the Biomarker Consortium. She holds an MS in Philosophy & Public Policy from the London School of Economics, focusing on AI Safety. Find out more about Allison through these links: Allison Duettmann on LinkedIn; @allisondman as Allison Duettmann on X; Allison Duettmann at Foresight Institute; Foresight Institute website; @foresightinst as Foresight Institute on X; Foresight Institute on YouTube; Existential Hope website; Connecting episodes you might be interested in: No.065R - The network state; No.090 - Interview with Matthew McCartney from the Charter Cities Institute; No.111 - Interview with Dave Hakkens about completely rethinking cities; No.222 - Interview with Adam Dorr about science-based optimism; No.251R - Existential risk and existential hope What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available. I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in. Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Tamara Winter is the Commissioning Editor at Stripe Press, the publishing imprint of Stripe, and a board member of the Institute for Progress and the Foundation for American Innovation. Previously, she worked as the head of strategy at the Charter Cities Institute, and at the Mercatus Center. She has written for the Chicago Tribune, Works in Progress, and a16z. She also wrote and hosted Beneath the Surface, a limited-run podcast about infrastructure and some of the most complex challenges facing our world. Known for her keen insights and high standards, Tamara is deeply passionate about storytelling, business development, and championing people with big ideas. This week, Barrett talks with Tamara about her exceptional career journey, from building a presence on Twitter to curating influential works at Stripe Press. Drawing from her upbringing as an African immigrant and the influence of her parents, Tamara reflects on the importance of surrounding oneself with high achievers, the value of curiosity, and the pursuit of excellence. She emphasizes the transformative power of storytelling, her love for tacit knowledge, and her vision for blending tech with story to influence the world. Barrett and Tamara also discuss the nuances of impactful work, the lasting influence of intentional connections, and Tamara's aspiration to inspire others while shaping a meaningful legacy through publishing. In this episode: (00:00) - Intro (03:39) - Tamara's journey to Stripe Press (06:47) - Turpentine and provocations (09:24) - Challenges and innovations in publishing (13:03) - The role of Stripe Press in Stripe's ecosystem (19:02) - The first book that captured Tamara's imagination (26:21) - Tamara's early days at Stripe (35:22) - Interviewing Jordan Mechner (37:48) - The duality of Teddy Roosevelt (40:13) - Remembering Charlie Munger (48:58) - The influence of mentors and unconventional career paths (01:04:55) - The value of high-quality authors and books (01:13:26) - The desire for excellence (01:16:08) - Family expectations and developing taste (01:23:54) - Principles for early career success (01:38:14) - Tamara's beautiful future (01:44:11) - Who Tamara is becoming Get full show notes and links at https://GoodWorkShow.com. Watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@barrettabrooks.
Greetings Glocal Citizens! Increasingly, I am thinking thoughts about places of being that better reflect citizen-centered social, economic and built enviroments. In recent conversation with Paul Damalie (https://glocalcitizens.fireside.fm/guests/paul-kwesi-damalie) and following the works of another fellow GC, Chinedu Echeruo (https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/beloved-ecosystem-6923267349097680896/) (which happens to be how I came across this week's guest), those thoughts are beginning to rise into a mental framework for manifesting that new world. Born and raised in Nigeria, Victor Ndukwe is an Architect that has evolved over the years straddle tech and design. He is currently a founding team member of Itana (formerly Talent City) (https://www.itana.africa) and is positioned to change the environmental and economic landscape in Africa. Victor developed a keen mind for technical things in his formative years and honed his creativity in architecture school. He is a T-shaped individual (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills) with strong skills in Architecture and environmental planning and secondary skills in programming - a hardcore java developer once upon a time. He has worked in architecture firms, software development firms, real estate development firms, and now city developers. He has his eyes set on developing the infrastructure in Africa by unlocking capital for development as well as solving the critical problem of energy in Africa. Victor's optimism and committment are clear as you'll come to understand in our conversation, and with this blueprint, his vision is looking like a present many on the Continent have been anticipating. Where to find Victor? Find out more about the Donacare Foundation (http://www.donacarefoundation.org) On LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/victorndukwe/) On X (https://twitter.com/vndukwe) What's Victor listening to? Johann Sebastian Bach (lin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGA1v6gZj1s) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (https://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/music/) George Frideric Handel (https://www.classicfm.com/composers/handel/) Other topics of interest: Umahia or Ama Ahia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umuahia) in Abia State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abia_State), Nigeria About Governor Alex Otti (https://www.alexotti.com) Discovery Channel (https://www.discovery.com) Charter Cities Institute (https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/intro/#whycc) Computer Village. Ikeja Lagos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Village) The Echelon Conspiracy Film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy) NIIT Nigeria (https://www.niit.com/nigeria) Free Trade Zones in Nigeria (https://nepza.gov.ng/free-zones/) What is Industry 3.0? (https://tech-labs.com/blog/evolution-industry-10-40-and-beyond) Special Guest: Victor Ndukwe.
Mark Lutter of the Charter Cities Institute and Braavos Cities discusses focusing on tangible, actionable research to help make better decisions for developing charter cities. Lutter explains the significant challenges in city development, including the necessity of political buy-in and complex stakeholder coordination amidst increasing global uncertainty. He notes that younger, growing populations often drive city growth. Alongside Jarrad Hope, they explore topics such as urbanization patterns, financing mechanisms for low-income housing, and economic development strategies essential for successful charter city projects.JOIN THE COMMUNITYLogos TwitterLogos Discord TIMESTAMPS:00:00:31 Who Is Mark Lutter and What Led Him to Charter Cities?00:04:31 What Is the Connection Between Urbanization and Economic Growth?00:07:55 How Do Charter Cities Address Urban Migration?00:09:04 What Are the Key Elements for Effective Urban Governance?00:12:03 What Infrastructure and Governance Are Needed for New Cities?00:15:45 How Did Mark's Journey Lead to Founding the Charter Cities Institute?00:17:51 How Has Increasing Global Uncertainty Affected Charter Cities?00:18:27 What Are the Stages and Challenges of Starting a Charter City?00:21:21 Why Do Charter Cities Have a Controversial Reputation?00:22:31 How Do Charter Cities Compare to Special Economic Zones and Other Models?00:25:15 What Are the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurial Communities?00:27:53 How Can a Charter City Develop Its Economy Intentionally?00:31:04 What Lessons Can Be Learned from Real-World Charter City Projects?00:36:21 What Role Do Productivity and Markets Play in Poverty Alleviation?00:37:42 What Criteria Determine the Location of a Charter City?00:39:24 How Do CCI and Bravo Cities Differ in Their Approach?00:40:46 What Is Happening with Charter City Projects in Zanzibar?00:43:59 What Types of Research Facilitate the Development of Charter Cities?00:45:02 Why Is Regional Influence Increasingly Important for Charter Cities?00:45:29 How Can One Get Involved or Learn More About Charter Cities? Logos Press Engine includes Logos Podcast and Hashing It Out. Hashing it Out dives into the mechanisms and hardware of the technology that aid in making sovereign communities.
Greetings Glocal Citizens! This week's conversation comes to you in two parts and is courtesy of a connection made by my guest from Episode 34, Stacey Enyame (https://glocalcitizens.fireside.fm/guests/stacey-enyame). Recognizing the intersection between tech and community/economic development and my background, Stacey suggested I join the Keta MakerSpace community on WhatsApp--a brainchild of #GlobalGhanaian, Paul Kwesi Damalie. We go into detail about the community and the vision for the platform and new city in the making in Part 2 of the conversation, both parts are not to be missed! Paul is founder of Damalie Innovation Holdings Group which invests in and builds companies in health tech, sports value chain, gaming and family entertainment, urban infrastructure & development and trade & embedded finance, climate resileince. Previously he was the co-founder of Inclusive Innovations Inc. which developed the Appruve API, product making it easy for financial services to verify individuals and businesses all over Africa. In 2023 Appruve was acquired by Smile ID. As a Fintech industry influencer, he is among Untapt's Top 23 fintech influencers to follow on X; he is a Chapter Lead of Next Money, the global thought leader community for stakeholders within the financial services and technology ecosystem. He organizes events (meetups & conferences) that create opportunities for stakeholders to discuss current trends, explore opportunities through networking and influence policy in the financial services ecosystem. He also has experience consulting for fintech startups and new market entrants into West Africa, working closely with fintech innovation programmes, accelerators and investors as well as financial inclusion research institutions. Where to find Paul? On LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauldamalie/) On X (https://twitter.com/PaulDamalie) On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/imaginedbysenam/) On Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/paul.damalie/) What's Paul reading? The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers (https://a.co/d/evhUwt1) by Ben Horowitz Every.to (https://every.to) What's Paul listening to? Funaná (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funan%C3%A1) Kizomba (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizomba) Other topics of interest: Keta Coastal Analysis (https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/11/6/1144) Albert (https://booknook.store/product/albert-comfort-ocran-executive-collection-paperback/) and Comfort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_Ocran) Ocran DSF Lab (https://www.dfslab.net) Caribou Digital (https://www.cariboudigital.net) Afropolitan Network State (https://www.afropolitan.io) Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin talks Charter Cities (https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/podcast/charter-cities-podcast-international-hubs-and-the-future-of-living-with-vitalik-buterin/) an the Charter Cities Institute (https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/author/marklutter/) New City Concepts - Zuzalu (https://www.vitadao.com/event/zuzalu), Próspera (https://www.prospera.co), Fumba Town (https://fumba.town), Itana (https://www.itana.africa) On Digital Nomads (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_nomad) Playground.ai (linkhttps://playground.ai) Google for Startups (https://startup.google.com) Y Combinator (https://www.ycombinator.com) Sand Hill Road (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Hill_Road) Tokeh Beach, Sierra Leone (https://tourismsierraleone.com/attractions/tokeh-beach/) Special Guest: Paul Damalie.
Greetings Glocal Citizens! This week's conversation comes to you in two parts and is courtesy of a connection made by my guest from Episode 34, Stacey Enyame (https://glocalcitizens.fireside.fm/guests/stacey-enyame). Recognizing the intersection between tech and community/economic development and my background, Stacey suggested I join the Keta MakerSpace community on WhatsApp--a brainchild of #GlobalGhanaian, Paul Kwesi Damalie. We go into detail about the community and the vision for the platform and new city in the making in Part 2 of the conversation, both parts are not to be missed! Paul is founder of Damalie Innovation Holdings Group which invests in and builds companies in health tech, sports value chain, gaming and family entertainment, urban infrastructure & development and trade & embedded finance, climate resileince. Previously he was the co-founder of Inclusive Innovations Inc. which developed the Appruve API, product making it easy for financial services to verify individuals and businesses all over Africa. In 2023 Appruve was acquired by Smile ID. As a Fintech industry influencer, he is among Untapt's Top 23 fintech influencers to follow on X; he is a Chapter Lead of Next Money, the global thought leader community for stakeholders within the financial services and technology ecosystem. He organizes events (meetups & conferences) that create opportunities for stakeholders to discuss current trends, explore opportunities through networking and influence policy in the financial services ecosystem. He also has experience consulting for fintech startups and new market entrants into West Africa, working closely with fintech innovation programmes, accelerators and investors as well as financial inclusion research institutions. Where to find Paul? On LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauldamalie/) On X (https://twitter.com/PaulDamalie) On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/imaginedbysenam/) On Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/paul.damalie/) What's Paul reading? The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers (https://a.co/d/evhUwt1) by Ben Horowitz Every.to (https://every.to) What's Paul listening to? Funaná (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funan%C3%A1) Kizomba (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizomba) Other topics of interest: Keta Coastal Analysis (https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/11/6/1144) Albert (https://booknook.store/product/albert-comfort-ocran-executive-collection-paperback/) and Comfort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_Ocran) Ocran DSF Lab (https://www.dfslab.net) Caribou Digital (https://www.cariboudigital.net) Afropolitan Network State (https://www.afropolitan.io) Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin talks Charter Cities (https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/podcast/charter-cities-podcast-international-hubs-and-the-future-of-living-with-vitalik-buterin/) an the Charter Cities Institute (https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/author/marklutter/) New City Concepts - Zuzalu (https://www.vitadao.com/event/zuzalu), Próspera (https://www.prospera.co), Fumba Town (https://fumba.town), Itana (https://www.itana.africa) On Digital Nomads (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_nomad) Playground.ai (linkhttps://playground.ai) Google for Startups (https://startup.google.com) Y Combinator (https://www.ycombinator.com) Sand Hill Road (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Hill_Road) Tokeh Beach, Sierra Leone (https://tourismsierraleone.com/attractions/tokeh-beach/) Special Guest: Paul Damalie.
In this episode, we delve into the controversy surrounding the Prospera charter city in Honduras, which has embraced libertarian principles and adopted Bitcoin as legal tender and a unit of account. The city is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the Honduran government. Gene asks Jeffrey Mason, from Charter Cities Institute, what it all means for the future of charter cities. Jeffrey provides some good examples of how charter cities still have a lot of potential, and he talks about projects CCI is involved in in Africa, particularly in Zanzibar. Tune in to gain insights into the intersection of governance, economics, and innovation in the context of charter cities.Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. About this episode's guest: Jeffrey Mason, Head of Research, Charter Cities Institute Jeffrey joined CCI as a Researcher in 2019. His research interests include urban economics, structural transformation, special economic zones, and technology ecosystems. He has worked on policy advisory projects in Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and Honduras, among other countries. Prior to joining the Charter Cities Institute, Jeffrey worked as an MA Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He holds a BA in economics from the University of Maryland and an MA in economics from George Mason University. His writing has been featured in publications including City Journal, Works in Progress, Investment Monitor, Quartz Africa, and The American Mind.What's covered in EP234Introduction. (0:00)Honduran ZEDEs: zones for employment and economic development. (4:12)Honduran ZEDEs and impacts on local communities. (9:41)Investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms. (15:15)Charter cities and their potential to improve governance and economic growth. (20:37)Charter cities and urban development in Zanzibar. (26:15)Affordable housing development in Zanzibar, Tanzania. (30:56)Urban development and new city projects. (39:27)TakeawaysThe controversy surrounding Prospera in Honduras highlights the risks and uncertainties involved in charter city projects.The concept of charter cities is evolving, with a growing emphasis on affordability, local engagement, and sustainable development to ensure their long-term success.Legal and political stability, along with government partnerships, are crucial for the success of charter cities, as demonstrated by the contrasting experiences of Prospera and the Zanzibar project, Fumba Town, that Charter Cities Institute is involved in.Links relevant to the conversationJeffrey's bio: https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/people/jeffrey-mason/Ryan Grim's report at the Intercept “Honduras Ratchets Up Battle With Crypto-Libertarian Investors, Rejects World Bank Court”: https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/Counter Points report “Honduras GOES TO WAR With Crypto Bros”, CCI's involvement with Fumba Town: https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/fumba-town/Fumba Town: https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/fumba-town/EP147 with Kurtis Lockhart on charter cities: https://economicsexplored.com/2022/07/11/charter-cities-a-public-private-partnership-ppp-model-w-kurtis-lockhart-ep147/Lumo Coffee promotionLumo Coffee Discount: Visit Lumo Coffee (lumocoffee.com) and use code EXPLORED20 for a 20% discount until April 30, 2024.Thanks to Obsidian Productions for mixing the episode and to the show's sponsor, Gene's consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com.
Can a city hold the key to unlocking economic prosperity on a grand scale? In this episode, we sit down with Brooke Bowman and Mark Lutter to discuss charter cities and their role in addressing economic development challenges. Mark is a visionary thinker invested in progress, governance, social dynamics, and the concept of new cities. He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Charter Cities Institute and CEO of Braavos Cities, a pioneering charter city development company. Brooke is the founder of Vibecamp, a community that aims to foster connections and personal growth. Join us as we delve into the intricacies of community-building, economic development, and cultural influence. We unpack the concept of charter cities as a way to address economic development challenges and the importance of facilitating genuine connections with people through city developments and fostering community and co-living without excessive overhead. Tuning in, you'll discover the value of creating spaces where like-minded individuals can gather and interact and how the intersection of co-creation and play drives culture and innovation. To learn how to unlock the potential of charter cities and create vibrant, sustainable communities with a focus on culture, innovation, and positive societal impact, don't miss this conversation!Key Points From This Episode:Introducing Mark, his background, and his interest in charter cities.The concept of Charter Cities and how they can alleviate poverty.Mark and Brooke's experience of a pop-up community experiment called Zuzalu.How community gatherings help drive innovation in a society.Explore creating a sustainable community with a vibrant culture.The Neighborhood project and how it helping to build communities.What role the internet plays in facilitating the formation of real-life communities.Details about the governance structure of the Próspera development.Incorporating families and children into Vibecamp communities.Insights into how long communities will take to grow to scale.Why mimicking successful models from history is essential.The important sense of community and shared values that festivals provide.Why there is a need for economic development alongside community building.An overview of the legal mechanisms to ensure long-term success.Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:Brooke BowmanBrooke Bowman on XMark LutterMark Lutter on XBraavos CitiesVibecampThe Network State ConferenceJason BennThe NeighborhoodCabin CityCharter Cities InstituteCharter Cities Institute on FacebookCharter Cities Institute on...
Affordable housing and economic development challenges in Africa are multifaceted and interconnected, but what is the solution? In today's conversation, we sit down with Jon Vandenheuvel, the founder of Small Farm Cities Africa and senior advisor for the Charter Cities Institute. Small Farm Cities integrates horticulture, aquaculture, infrastructure, and residential housing for ownership and wealth creation throughout Africa. Jon is a visionary leader in agribusiness, municipal infrastructure development, and applied technology systems. His impactful work spans multiple African nations, where he has spearheaded infrastructure, agribusiness, and e-commerce initiatives to help foster economic growth. In our conversation, we unpack his hyper-affordable agribusiness concept, the importance of systems solutions to systems problems like poverty, and how Jon came to be building new cities in Africa. Discover his definition of affordable housing, what is stunting the development of African countries, and why formal ownership of housing and land is so crucial for Africa. We delve into why building and storing wealth is a core value of Small Farm Cities, how the company plans to scale, leveraging the industrial sector for development, realizing Africa's economic potential, and much more! Jon also shares details about the success of their pilot project in Malawi and how the concept is resulting in larger projects he is currently working on. To find out how Jon is driving housing accessibility and development in Africa, tune in now!Key Points From This Episode:The definition of a small farm city and details about the first community he built.Affordable formal ownership of housing and why it is significant for African countries.Providing an affordable housing baseline while incorporating building options.Learn about the company's approach to housing modularity and scaling. Jon shares his approach to sourcing and developing talent for Small Farm Cities. Scaling the company's method and how it is entering the light industrial sector. Unlocking Africa's industrial potential to build communities and cities. Malawi's Special Economic Zone Law and why it is a win for the country.Valuable lessons and takeaways from their project in Ghana. Transitioning refugee cities into investable and productive cities. His professional background and career journey to Small Farm Cities. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:Jon Vandenheuvel on LinkedInSmall Farm CitiesAfrica Risk DashboardLeif Van Grinsven on LinkedInStarlinkRio TintoThe Mystery of CapitalNational Planning CommissionThomas Munthali on LinkedInMIT School of Architecture and Urban...
"24-hour city embracing density and buzzing always" Are you interested in the 24-hour city? What do you think about technology helping us being creative? How can we learn better from history? Interview with Alby Bocanegra, the Chief Future Officer and Founder at The Urban Futurist Inc. We talk about his vision for the future of cities, collaboration, AI and smartness, human connections, and many more. Alby Bocanegra currently serves as Chief Future Officer and Founder at The Urban Futurist Inc, a consultancy and advisory organization that is shaping the cities of the future. Prior to his role at Mastercard, Alby served the people of New York as Interim Chief Technology Officer in the Mayor's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (MOCTO). He has dedicated his career to building expertise in talent architecture, business strategy, and performance management with a passion for civic tech. Alby spends his time studying future technologies and makes predictions of the impact and implications they'll have on cities, the people that live in them and the ecosystems that will need to be developed to ensure that all can benefit. As an advisor and consultant, he shapes strategies, governance models and facilitates engagements focused on delivering a better tomorrow for people. Alby also lends his expertise as an Advisory Board Member on Digital Twins to the World Economic Forum. Find out more about Alby through these links: Alby Bocanegra on LinkedIn; @albybocanegra as Alby Bocanegra on X; The Urban Futurist Inc. on LinkedIn; Alby Bocanegra at the Charter Cities Institute; Alby Bocanegra at the Word Urban Forum; Alby Bocanegra at the Smart Cities Coucil; Urban Futurism for Smarter Cities podcast with Alby Bocanegra; Connecting episodes you might be interested in: No.015 - Interview with Luke Housego about data and knowledge; No.126 - Interview with Corey Gray about beauty as a feature for sustainability; No.183R - 24-hour cities network; What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available. I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in. Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
For the first time ever, parents going through IVF can use whole genome sequencing to screen their embryos for hundreds of conditions. Harness the power of genetics to keep your family safe, with Orchid. Check them out at orchidhealth.com. On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Michael Muthukrishna about his new book, A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going. Muthukrishna is Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics, an affiliate of the Developmental Economics Group at STICERD and Data Science Institute, Azrieli Global Scholar at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Technical Director of The Database of Religious History, a fellow at the Charter Cities Institute and board member of the One Pencil Project. Of Sri Lankan extraction, he trained as an engineer in Australia, but later became interested in anthropological and cultural questions. He studied for his Ph.D. under Joe Henrich in Canada. Like his mentor, Muthukrishna cross-applies toolkits from evolutionary biology and population genetics to questions of variation and change in human cultures. A Theory of Everyone is an ambitious book with arguably galactic ambitions. The chapters jump from topics like the Cambrian Explosion to the ever-increasing amount of energy needed to get at the fossil fuels that power our civilization. But to start off, Razib asks Muthukrishna about his background as a “third culture kid” and how that might have influenced his anthropological interests. Muthukrishna observed firsthand social and political chaos in Papua New Guinea, while his family's background in Sri Lanka illustrated for him the salience of ethnic tensions, even when differences might seem minimal to outsiders. Then Razib talks about A Theory of Everyone's fixation on energy and its role in powering organic life, about our technology-driven civilization and about our potential interplanetary future. Here, Muthukrishina thinks like an engineer, albeit with a broad historical and evolutionary perspective. He and Razib also discuss the problems of “degrowth economics” and why it is a dead-end for a dynamic civilization's flourishing. Razib also probes Muthukrishna for his views on IQ, its utility as a psychological measure, the variation between individuals and groups, and how those might relate to cultural evolutionary frameworks for considering cognitive aptitudes. The conversation concludes with a consideration of future possibilities as we hurtle past our current energy constraints as a civilization (Muthukrishna is bullish on nuclear), and the role of decentralized political experimentation in improving our social technology.
Charter Cities Institute Founder and Chairman Mark Lutter returns to the podcast to share his perspective on network states, charter city trends, and more. Mark is also the CEO of Braavos Cities, a charter city development company partnering with local landowners and a leading organizer of Zuzalu, a new pop-up city in Montenegro. Tune in today to hear Mark's insights on existing network states and why they have either succeeded or failed. You'll also learn about some of the challenges associated with attracting appropriate talent to cities in order to facilitate growth. Mark shares his experience at Zuzalu and describes the flat hierarchical structure that was made possible there. Using the metaphor of gardening instead of carpentry, Mark illustrates his unique approach to building network cities. Hear how Mark differs from others in the charter city space on the matter of location and his analysis of the global response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. As our episode draws to a close, Mark reveals his thoughts on restarting struggling economies, finding buy-in from local government, and more. Thanks for listening!Key Points From This Episode:An introduction to today's episode with CCI Founder and Chairman Mark Lutter. What Zuzali is and how it came together with reference to Vitalik Buterin and Balaji Srinivasan.Defining the terms ‘pop up city', ‘pop up village', and ‘network state'. How the historical failures of network-type states influence Mark's feelings.Examining the examples of Israel, Utah, Salt Lake City, and Jonestown.Considering why San Francisco is especially susceptible to cults.Why Mark returned from Montenegro and Zuzalu with optimism for network states.How the internet can behave as a giant sorting mechanism.His predictions for how sorting mechanisms will change in the future.The problem of attracting appropriate talent to cities. Why Montenegro was the chosen location for Zuzalu. Building Zuzalu whilst building local relationships.The role of the host government in the success of Zuzalu. Where the name Zuzalu came from.Flat status hierarchies in network cities and other agglomerates.How they managed to sustain a flat hierarchy at Zuzalu. What it means to think like a gardener and not a carpenter.What Braavos Cities is and what it aims to do.Where Mark differs from other folks in the charter city space on the matter of location.Two migration patterns to tap into. The greatest successes of the COVID-19 pandemic and what could have been adopted instead.Distinguishing between Charter Cities Institute and Braavos Cities.Restarting an economy through leveraging comparative advantage.Getting buy-in from local government.Job creation and investment. The Zanzibar project that Mark is excited about at the moment.Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:Mark LutterMark Lutter on TwitterMark Lutter on MediumMark Lutter EmailBraavos CitiesZuzalu
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Architect: Dissertation on Improving the Social Dynamics of Confined Spaces & Shelters Precedents Report, published by Tereza Flidrova on June 6, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR In this post, I will share the work I have done on the topic of civilisational shelters (1), (2), over the last year as an architecture master's student. I will share my dissertation on improving the social dynamics of confined spaces, including a practical design guide that can be used to design new or evaluate and improve existing confined spaces. I will also share the Shelters Precedents Report Draft I worked on last spring. Key links from this post include: My dissertation in pdf or flipbook formats Link to the Wellbeing Worksheet, an interactive design guide proposed in my dissertation Video summarising the research and findings (especially useful if you want to learn about my design proposal and the design guide) Link to the Shelters Precedents Report Draft Outline Since last spring, I have explored ways to get involved in EA with my skills as an architect. So far, I wrote this and this article about my ideas and journey of becoming the ‘EA Architect', and have also started to help anyone with architectural or planning background get involved through the EA Architects and Planners group. One of the key areas I got involved in was civilisational shelters. This summer, I am going to Zambia to intern with the Charter Cities Institute. This post has two parts: Part 1: My architectural research-led dissertation on ‘Improving the Social Dynamics of Confined Spaces Located in Extreme Environments'; Part 2: Sharing the Shelters Precedents Report Draft I developed last spring and so far only shared internally. Part 1: Improving the Social Dynamics of Confined Spaces Located in Extreme Environments After co-organising the SHELTER Weekend last summer (see this post by Janne for a summary of what has been discussed), as well as studying various precedents and talking to many experts, I concluded that the best way I can contribute to the shelters work is by understanding what influences the social dynamics of very confined spaces. Hence, I chose this as my master's thesis at Oxford Brookes. Why I did it Global catastrophes, such as nuclear wars, pandemics, asteroid collisions or biological risks, threaten the very existence of mankind (Beckstead, 2015). These challenges have caused people to consider distant locations such as polar regions, deep sea, outer space, and even underground facilities as potential locations to seek safety during such crises (Beckstead, 2015; Jebari, 2015). However, living in confined spaces for prolonged periods brings prominent social challenges that might prevent their long-term success (Jebari, 2015). To ensure the successful habitation of confined spaces, special attention needs to be given to their design, allowing humans to survive and thrive long-term. While there is existing research on the design of specific confined spaces, like the design of research stations in polar regions (Bannova, 2014; Palinkas, 2003), space stations (Basner, Dinges, et al., 2014; Harrison et al., 1985), prisons (Karthaus et al., 2019; Lily Bernheimer, Rachel O'Brien, Richard Barnes, 2017), biospheres testing space habitation (Nelson et al., 1994; Zabel et al., 1999) or nuclear bunkers (Graff, 2017; NPR, 2011), there seems to be a lack of a comprehensive architectural framework that can be utilised by designers of confined spaces in extreme environments to help improve their liveability. This is despite the fact there has been much research on the impacts of the physical environment (Klitzman and Stellman, 1989), including staying indoors (Rashid and Zimring, 2008), thermal comfort (Levin, 1995), the impact of light (Basner, Babisch, et al., 2014) and noise (Levin, 1995) on ...
In this Geoeconomics Podcast episode, Niza Gonzalez talks with Jeffrey Mason from the Charter Cities Institute about the important role data has in the development of cities, the New Cities Map launch and how it can help the research in the field. This podcast was produced by the Adrianople Group. The Adrianople Group is a business intelligence firm that focuses on special economic zones, venture capital, private equity, and geoeconomics. For more information, please visit: https://www.adrianoplegroup.com/ https://twitter.com/geoeconomicspod
Niklas speaks with Mark Lutter. Mark is the Founder and Chairman of the Charter Cities Institute, a non-profit which is building the ecosystem for charter cities. Mark has a PhD in economics from George Mason University.Mark also has a podcast called the Charter Cities Podcast, a fantastic listen to learn about this fascinating movement.Mark and Niklas start by talking about how they both became more motivated to pursue experimentation to fix or build alternatives to government institutions as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, and how they hope charter cities can propel new technology development such as biotech and longevity or drone delivery.Mark talks about charter cities, how to finance them and the many other challenges involved in building them. First and foremost, charter cities are a political challenge and require local partnerships and buy-in from national governments.Mark believes an optimistic scenario could lead to charter cities having 3 million residents in ten years with growth rates 1-2 percentage points higher than the surrounding region. Charter cities have a very long time horizon and are up against the inherent stability of existing institutions: people typically don't move unless there is a really strong motivation such as political or religious persecution, or instability.This stickiness of existing institutions is something Mark believes is often underestimated by proponents of "network states" such as Balaji Srinivasan. While charter cities have overlaps with network states, Mark believes there is not enough migration flow out of developed countries with bad institutions - the much stronger force pressure to migrate is from developed to developing countries.Mark cautions against claiming the sacred concept of political sovereignty and instead opts for partnerships with governments. He sees the biggest potential for charter cities in Africa, because of the strong urbanization ratesMark is a key thought leader in the charter cities space, and achieved tremendous success in increasing awareness and developing the right templates through the Charter Cities Institute - it was fascinating to have Mark on to share his learnings!Infinita Discord: https://discord.gg/dwbNh7NKNiklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzingerInfinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Interview with Matthew McCartney, professor of development economics and researcher at the Charter Cities Institute. We will talk about his vision for the future of cities, the pace of urbanisation, economic concepts in urban areas, intratrade in Africa, and many more. Professor Matthew McCartney spent twenty years as an academic at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London (2000-2011), and at the University of Oxford (2011-21). He has been a visiting Professor at Universities in China, Pakistan, India, Japan, South Korea, Poland, and Belgium. He is a development economist by background with a teaching and research specialization in the economic development of India and Pakistan after 1947. He has published, supervised, and taught on economic issues relating to industrialization, technology, trade, the role of the state, investment and economic growth, and human development issues relating to nutrition, employment, education, poverty, and inequality. He has also worked for the World Bank, USAID, EU, and UNDP in Botswana, Georgia, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Jordan, Bosnia, and Zambia. He holds a BA in Economics from the University of Cambridge, an MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. in Economics from SOAS, University of London. His latest book is the outcome of two years of research-based in China and Pakistan ‘The Dragon from the Mountains: The CPEC from Kashgar to Gwadar' and was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. You can find out more about Matthew through these links: Matthew McCartney at the Charter Cities Institute; Interview with Matthew McCartney and Junaid Qureshi, the director of European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) about Pakistan, China and CPEC Matthew McCartney speaking at EFSAS Seminar on CPEC in EU Parliament; The Dragon from the Mountains book by Matthew McCartney, published by Cambridge University Press; The Dragon from the Mountains book by Matthew McCartney on Amazon; Connecting episodes you might be interested in: No.060I - Interview with Gala Camacho about responsible technologies; No.072I - Interview with Tamás Mezős about urban characteristics; No.087I - Interview with Paul Brookbanks about the rate and pace of urbanisation; What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available. I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in. Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
Are you interested in Africa and its opportunities with railway? Summary of two blog posts titled: African Railways could go bankrupt but this is not necessarily a bad thing and It will be the best of times, it will be the worst of times: thinking about the contemporary African railway mania from 2022 by Matthew McCartney published on the Charter Cities Institute website. Matthew will be the next interviewee and this episode provides some background information on some topics we will discuss. Additionally, since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how the African continent is progressing with railways. These articles present the contemporary situation, challenges and possible benefits of railways across Africa. As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects: Although historical evidence proves that railways are basically bad financial investments, they are important for long-term economic growth, like education, broadband internet and good governance. Railways can help long-term economic growth with making urbanisation, transportation and industrialisation easier, which later lead to paying for the railways. The economic growth driven by railways can lead to institutional change. You can find the first post through this link and the second through this. You can find the transcript through this link. What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available. I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in. Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
What do high education and low fertility rates have in common? According to today's guest, Charlie Robertson, they are both positively correlated with economic growth. In today's episode, Charlie shares the reasons why he believes that countries that don't get their fertility rates down to below 3 children per woman and those that don't have adult literacy rates above 70% are doomed to remain trapped in poverty. Join us for a round-the-world trip where Charlie delves into the history of South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the West, and offers his explanation for why some countries have flourished while others have floundered. Charlie is the Global Chief Economist at Renaissance Capital and the author of The Fastest Billion and The Time-Travelling Economist. Key Points From This Episode: • Understanding economic trends in Africa over the past few years. • Factors that lead to the creation of urban slums. • Charlie's hypothesis on the link between fertility and economic growth. • What Charlie sees as the optimal fertility rate. • Basic adult literacy rates in Sub-Saharan African countries when they were decolonized. • A statistic that highlights the progress that has been made on the education front globally. • Why education is imperative for growth. • The correlation between education and fertility. • The importance of correctly sequencing educational priorities. • An explanation of the economic success being experienced in the Philippines. • Comparing the rate of economic growth in India and China. • Reasons why Pakistan hasn't kept up with India's levels of economic growth. • Explaining Sri Lanka's downfall. • Charlie's thoughts on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. • The energy financing issues facing African countries. • Challenges of using green energy as a baseload power source. • Why Charlie believes governments should be focusing on providing electricity to factories rather than homes. • Benefits of decentralized energy systems. • The potential of municipal-level financing approaches. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-robertson-6814751/?originalSubdomain=uk (Charlie Robertson on LinkedIn) https://www.rencap.com/ (Renaissance Capital) https://www.amazon.com/Fastest-Billion-Africas-Economic-Revolution/dp/0957420307 (The Fastest Billion) https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=the+time+travelling+economist (The Time-Travelling Economist) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter)
The West's misconceptions about Africa are vast, particularly when it comes to the realm of business. Today we are joined by Dr. Deanne de Vries, who has worked across the continent in various capacities for over 30 years. She is currently an advisor for firms looking to enter the African market and is the author of Africa: Open for Business. In this episode, Deanne fills us in on the challenges and the exciting opportunities for doing business in Africa, sharing insights into the evolving tech and startup scenes. We discuss Africa's agricultural and manufacturing sectors, and Deanne breaks down what governments need to do to boost these industries. To hear about the community-centric focus of African business and to find out why on-the-ground integrated local presence is far more valuable than any data, tune in! Key Points From This Episode: • The history of Deanne de Vries' work in Africa. • The ABC of learning to do business in unfamiliar territory: Appetite, Bandwidth, and Capital. • The evolution of the African tech scene. • The focus of Africa's startup scene. • The potential for French-speaking West Africa to rise in the tech sector. • What governments can do to boost agricultural productivity in Africa. • The importance of access to the market, in terms of agriculture. • The challenges faced by Africa's manufacturing industry. • Why African business can't be judged by statistics alone. • The number one key to success for doing business in Africa. • Deanne shares a case study to illustrate the importance of being on the ground. • The potential of the African Continental Free Trade Area to promote business in Africa. • The greatest Western misunderstandings about doing business in Africa. • The challenge of data accuracy across Africa. • What trumps data when it comes to doing business. • The number one way to de-risk any deal in Africa. • Deanne shares her chocolate chip cookie story. • The impact of China's increasing presence across the continent. • The influence of Turkey, Russia, and the UAE on Africa. • How best to think about market entry in Africa. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.drdeannedevries.com/ (Dr. Deanne de Vries) https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-deanne-de-vries-582168a/ (Dr. Deanne de Vries on LinkedIn) https://www.instagram.com/drdeannedevries (Dr. Deanne de Vries on Instagram) https://www.amazon.com/Africa-Business-Discover-Continent-Opportunity/dp/B09SVTTZFS (Africa: Open for Business) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter)
Can we do cities better? Researcher Heba Elhanafy, and the American headquartered think tank the Charter Cities Institute, think so. Heba joined Jason and the Smarter Cities Podcast from her office in Zambia, where she is working with African governments on creating new and better cities that work for people as well as deliver economic development. Learn more about Heba and the Charter Cities Institute at: https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/ Smarter Cities Podcast: Listen and subscribe at Spotify here: https://lnkd.in/fJq96sk Listen and subscribe at Apple Podcasts here: https://lnkd.in/fRBYnZf You Tube: https://lnkd.in/g8rFxGf E-mail us at smartercitiespod@gmail.com This episode is presented with thanks to Podium, the end-to-end digital platform that provides the property and construction industry with insights and clarity never experienced before. Find out more at: https://lnkd.in/dFwaDufp
Kurtis Lockhart, Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute, tells us about the benefits of charter cities - cities with their own rules or charter, independent of national or subnational governments. Kurtis argues the best way to implement charter cities is via public-private partnerships (PPPs). Learn about the fascinating work the Charter Cities Institute is involved in around the world with a view to stimulating economic development and lifting millions out of poverty. About this episode's guest - Kurtis LockhartKurtis Lockhart is Executive Director & Head of Research at the Charter Cities Institute. Kurtis is also a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Oxford. His research examines the effect of institutional reforms on public goods provision with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. At Oxford he has taught both quantitative methods and African politics. In the field, Kurtis has previously worked as a Research Manager for the International Growth Centre (IGC), for Warc Africa (both in Sierra Leone), and for the ELIMU Impact Evaluation Center in Kenya where he managed the implementation of several randomized control trials across many different sectors (health insurance, rural electrification, tax administration, and legal aid). Kurtis has also completed consulting projects with both Oxford Development Consultancy and with Warc Africa. He holds an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics where he graduated top of his class, as well as a BA in Economics and Development Studies (First Class Honors) from McGill University. Find him on Twitter @kurtislockhart.Links relevant to the conversationThe Charter Cities InstitutePodcast Archives - The Future of Development (Charter Cities Institute podcast)Paul Romer: Why the world needs charter citiesThe Charter Cities Institute on Twitter: @CCIdotCityCreditsThanks to the show's audio engineer Josh Crotts for his assistance in producing the episode and to the show's sponsor, Gene's consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. Please consider signing up to receive our email updates and to access our e-book Top Ten Insights from Economics at www.economicsexplored.com. Also, please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. Economics Explored is available via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, and other podcasting platforms.
Development is one of the major challenges of our time. Unfortunately, it's often approached in a way that does more harm than good. Efosa Ojomo has a better solution, and he's here today to share it. Efosa is the leader of the Global Prosperity Research Group at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, the co-author of The Prosperity Paradox, and the author of the upcoming book, The Prosperity Process. In this episode, Efosa explains how his first foray in the development space (building wells in Nigeria) catalyzed a journey of discovery which led him to realize that, in order to truly change the world, we need to implement pull strategies instead of push strategies and focus on market creating innovations. He shares some examples of what these innovations look like and we discuss what it takes to be a market creating innovator, how regulation impacts innovation, a new way to think about corruption, and more! Make sure to tune in today. Key Points From This Episode: • The lesson Efosa learned through his first foray in the development world. • Definitions of the three types of innovation that Efosa and his co-authors explain in depth in their book, The Prosperity Paradox. • Efosa shares the story of Mo Ibrhaim to highlight the power of market creating innovations. • Push versus pull development strategies and the problem with the former. • The story of Indomie Noodles as an example of the huge amount of change that can be made through the implementation of a pull strategy. • How a proliferation of government agencies negatively impacts a country's entrepreneurial ecosystem. • The type of person who is best suited to be a leader in the market creating innovation space. • Aid for developing countries: how the approach needs to change. • Efosa explains why good laws are not enough to create thriving communities. • Key factors that resulted in the rise and fall of Venice. • How Efosa believes we should be tackling the issue of corruption. • A tribute to Clayton Christenson. • The Prosperity Process; Efosa's future book. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: http://www.apple.com (Efosa Ojomo) https://twitter.com/EfosaOjomo (Efosa Ojomo on Twitter) https://www.christenseninstitute.org/global-prosperity/ (Global Prosperity Research Group at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation) https://www.amazon.com/Prosperity-Paradox-Innovation-Nations-Poverty/dp/0062851829 (The Prosperity Paradox) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mo-Ibrahim (Mo Ibrahim) https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/gambling-on-development/ (Gambling on Development) https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuen-yuen-ang-35a93920/ (Yuen Yuen Ang) https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227 (Why Nations Fail) https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244 (The Innovator's Dilemma) https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining-Successful/dp/1422196577 (The Innovator's Solution) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter)
The Ukraine-Russia conflict has dominated headlines over the past few months, with countless theories and hypotheses being touted to explain Russia's aggression. Join us as we talk to one of the world's leading experts on violence and politics, Professor Chris Blattman. We start the episode with an explanation of why Chris chose to write his latest book Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace, and how he can apply the logic within to explain Putin's motivations and behavior. We learn why peace is a better driver for innovation and competition than war, and what Chris feels about the controversial observations made by John Mearsheimer about the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Tune in to learn what the George Washington example is, and the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in the rising levels of violence within the USA. We next move on to the role of CBT in reducing violence across the globe, with some insightful examples of Mr. Rogers-like personas across Africa who Chris has worked with. This episode is jam-packed with tons of fascinating insights into current affairs, how to best tackle poverty, theoretical debate and so much more. Join us today as we talk to a true role model and thought leader on another episode of the Charter Cities podcast. Key Points From This Episode: • An introduction to Chris Blattman, author, economist, political scientist, expert on violence, and seasoned peacebuilder. • The inspiration behind why Chris wrote Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace. • Chris's response to John Mearsheimer's observations on the Ukraine-Russia conflict. • Why Chris is content that his book was published before Russia invaded Ukraine. • The five logics of war applied to the Ukraine-Russia conflict: unchecked interests, intangible incentives, uncertainty, commitment problems, and misperceptions. • Why Chris feels that peace drives competition and innovation better than war. • The George Washington example: what it means and how it can be applied to other situations. • Why Chris is interested in applying Machiavellian logic to his research and blogging. • How the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted levels of violence within the USA, and why. • Why the Mr. Rogers principle is so effective, and examples Chris has come across in other countries. • CBT and how it can be applied to reduce poverty. • The monetary values associated with CBT across different cultures. • Why oversimplifying complex problems is bad for the solution, and why including locals in the solution is key to success. • An example of one of Chris' RCTs that failed! • Why Chris feels that he might have had a larger impact on society if he had moved into consulting in Africa. • The factors that helped to make the Harris School the success it is today. • Why Chris thinks giving cash is more effective at reducing poverty than other interventions. • How decentralizing power will be the ultimate solution to poverty. • Chris's thoughts on the Charter Cities Institute and goals. • Where Chris is now, and the issues he will be researching in the next five years. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisblattman/ (Chris Blattman on LinkedIn) https://chrisblattman.com/ (Chris Blattman) https://chrisblattman.com/why-we-fight/ (Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace) https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010 (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined) https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-tilley-obe-a242501b8/?originalSubdomain=uk (Charles Tilley on LinkedIn)...
In order to build the cities of the future, there is a need for synergy between a number of elements and institutions and, as philanthropy evolves with the times, an active approach to impacting the necessary changes means an understanding of these sometimes disparate forces. Joining us on the show today to discuss his philanthropic philosophy and plans is the Founder of GitLab, Sid Sijbrandij. Sid is also a supporter of the Charter Cities Institute while occupying an active role in the nutrition, software, crypto, and non-profits spaces. Today, he generously shares his thoughts on what is needed right now in order to push things forward for the next generation of cities. We discuss GitLab's approach to helping Ukraine and their contingent of employees who live in the country and we touch on what needs attention in the longer term, especially with regards to bridging gaps between separate industries or institutions for shared benefit before Sid shares his thoughts on how AI will influence philanthropy in the coming years and what he hopes to see in the cities of the future. To hear all this and much more from a very special guest, join us on Seeding the Future! Key Points From This Episode: • GitLab's current focus on helping Ukraine and its employees stationed there. • The role of new technology in providing aid for Ukraine. • Motivations for Sid's philanthropy and how he frames his efforts. • Creative opportunities presented by remote work and new cities. • Considering the different avenues through which Sid explores impacting positive change. • Sid's thoughts on where new wealth might go and how innovation can lead to impact. • Areas that could be improved upon; bringing together wisdom from different spaces. • The things that Sid looks for when assessing a new team or organization to work with. • AI and philanthropy in the 21st century; Sid weighs in on where we are headed. • What happens when money transfers between generations and how it impacts philanthropy. • Sid's predictions about the geography of wealth and giving. • Transparency and opinions in a big company; why Sid stands by this model. • Amenities that Sid values in the charter cities of the future. • Factors that would have a positive influence on philanthropic involvement in charter cities. • The excitement that Sid holds for longer-term projects. • Important questions in the discussion on the future of philanthropy. • Balancing the roles of the state and philanthropic institutions for public goods. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://twitter.com/sytses (Sid Sijbrandij on Twitter) https://about.gitlab.com/ (GitLab) https://www.givewell.org/ (GiveWell) https://www.forbes.com/profile/john-arnold/ (John Arnold) https://www.lionsclubs.org/en (Lions) https://www.rotary.org/en (Rotary) https://www.streetartbio.com/artists/banksy/ (Banksy) https://www.thirdsectorcap.org/team/caroline-whistler/ (Caroline Whistler) https://www.thirdsectorcap.org/ (Third Sector) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute)
Welcome to Seeding the Future, a podcast from the Charter Cities Institute, where we explore how giving and philanthropy are changing as wealth is created in new industries, at younger ages, and by more diverse demographics. In this inaugural epode, we hear from John Arnold, American philanthropist, former Enron executive, and Founder of Arnold Ventures, about philanthropy for policy change. John hit it big trading natural gas in the 1990s and 2000s, going on to found one of the most successful energy trading hedge funds, Centaurus Energy, after leaving Enron. He now ranks as one of the world's richest people, with a net worth well over a billion dollars, and runs Arnold Ventures (formerly the Laura and John Arnold Foundation) with his wife, an organization doing groundbreaking work in criminal justice reform. Today, John shares how education reform, system design, and public policy inform his giving and some of the challenges he has encountered in advocating for policy. We discuss political polarization, crypto wealth, and their impact on philanthropy and John shares his interesting perspective on nonprofits as third parties that can solve problems in areas that governments and the private sector can't, plus so much more! Make sure not to miss this conversation with the billionaire philanthropist taking on criminal justice reform, John Arnold. Key Points From This Episode: • How education reform, system design, and public policy have informed John's philanthropy. • What his strategy for impact entails when it comes to advocating for policy. • Major changes John has witnessed in philanthropy, including a shift to ‘giving while living'. • Bridging the gap between founders and the nonprofit world with patience and commitment. • Why John believes nonprofits need to be more direct with donors. • Challenges that come with advocating for policy, particularly in the criminal justice space. • Political polarization and philanthropy; what role nonprofits can play in voting reform. • How decentralized crypto wealth will impact the philanthropy of the future. • Global conflict resolution efforts and why organizations have lost momentum in this area. • Finding problems that philanthropy can solve by looking in areas that are too politically or financially risky for the government or the private sector. • John's thoughts on the disconnect between philanthropic intent and philanthropic action. • The inherent flaws of donor-advised funds that the ACE Act seeks to solve. • Why John is impressed by philanthropic efforts in the climate change space. • Why he encourages founders, philanthropists, and nonprofits not to wait until tomorrow. • How to address the issue of connecting nonprofits with donors and vice versa. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn (John D. Arnold on Twitter) https://www.arnoldventures.org/ (Arnold Ventures) https://ssir.org/articles/entry/against_big_bets# (‘Against Big Bets') https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.linkedin.com/in/skye-lawrence/ (Skye Lawrence on LinkedIn)
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 builds, what works, and what doesn't work), and why a single developer working on a city is less effective than multiple developers and shareholders. Heba breaks down the benefits of building bottom-up, instead of top-down, and describes what developers can expect to learn from the planning guidelines. We also hear about two examples of urban planning done right: the Manhattan example, and the much smaller scale Ethiopian Urban Expansion initiative. Tune in to learn how communities help the expansion and growth of a development, and how planning a city can help lift people out of poverty. We wrap up the episode with some of Heba's personal experiences of traffic living in cities across the global south, and why she believes a new model needs to be implemented. So, for all this and so much more, press “Play” now! Key Points From This Episode: • Welcome to today's guest, urban researcher Heba Elhanafy. • What the newly released planning guidelines cover. • How new city-making has changed over time. • The three topics the planning guide looks at: how the global south builds, what works, and what doesn't work. • Why one developer building a city is a bad idea. • The benefits of building bottom-up, instead of top-down. • How planning can assist chartering cities that lift people out of poverty. • Why the planning guidelines will help developers. • An example of the Ethiopian Urban Expansion Initiative. • Understanding that communities will help with the expansion and growth of a development. • The Manhattan example, as a large-scale example. • Enhancing mobility within a city, and the benefits to workers. • Why building up is better than building out. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heba-elhanafy-918691a0/ (Heba Elhanafy on LinkedIn) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter)
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. Samuel Hughes, a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, a Research Fellow in Philosophy, Theology, and Religion at Oxford University, and a frequent commentator on issues ranging from architecture and urbanism to aesthetics. He was also Sir Roger Scruton's researcher on the Building Beautiful Commission. His focus at Policy Exchange is on understanding why the quantity and quality of new homes and neighborhoods is so inadequate in the UK and developing policy instruments to improve them. In this episode, we discuss the consideration of aesthetics in the urban planning process, the concept of beauty as a benchmark that all new developments should meet, and how empowering residents to design their own streets can help solve the housing crisis that the UK is currently facing. We also touch on survivorship bias; data, technology, and aesthetics; and the cost of suburbia, as well as the positive and negative aspects of path dependency, and more! Make sure to join us today for a fascination conversation about the ‘new' urban aesthetic with Dr. Samuel Hughes. Key Points From This Episode: • How Samuel's philosophy studies have influenced his views on urbanism and architecture. • His reflections on the role that aesthetics or ‘beauty' plays in UK urban planning debates. • How the win-win model for ‘street votes' impacts the future of UK cities. • Samuel describes what he calls a bobtailed version of street votes in Houston, Texas. • Why he believes we find older buildings more attractive than contemporary architecture. • Survivorship bias versus loss of skills necessary to replicate ‘more beautiful' architecture. • The appetite that fueled the dramatic shift in architectural style post WWI, and gave birth to Brutalism, for example. • Samuel shares why he believes that architects tend to make bad urban planners. • How modern simulation and design technology have changed the built environment. • The role empirical data plays in influencing the aesthetics of the built environment. • While he doesn't share the contempt for suburbia that many of his peers have, Samuel acknowledges that it imposes enormous costs. • What the west can learn about architecture and urban form from places like Japan. • German architecture as an example of path dependency as a positive and negative force. • Samuel's advice for building a new city: design institutional structures in cities that will allow those cities to evolve over time. • Learn more about Samuel's book on philosophical approaches to artistic modernism. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/people/samuel-hughes (Dr. Samuel Hughes) https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-hughes-248121a3/ (Dr. Samuel Hughes on LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/scp_hughes (Dr. Samuel Hughes on Twitter) https://policyexchange.org.uk/ (Policy Exchange) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/861832/Living_with_beauty_BBBBC_report.pdf (‘Living with beauty') https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/against-the-survival-of-the-prettiest/ (‘Against the survival of the prettiest') https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook)...
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 pragmatic about the topic, but mass migration has been occurring for decades, and although there are some exceptions, in the majority of cases, societies have absorbed the newcomers and the newcomers have assimilated remarkably well. Parag is an Asian-American who has also lived in Europe, and his personal perspective combined with the in-depth research that he has conducted around migration, sustainability, community, governance, citizenship and more, reveals a lot about what drives us to do the things we do, and offers a glimpse of what our future could look like. Key Points From This Episode: • Parag shares his thoughts on why the US should (hypothetically) buy Greenland. • The premise of Parag's new book, Move. • Two megatrends that are currently shaping the world. • Four potential futures that Parag thinks we are heading for. • Immigration policies in the UK, US, and Canada, and what these indicate about the future. • Changes in migration dynamics since Parag's school days, and what is driving those changes. • The sentiment amongst European politicians about migrants that Parag has picked up through his research. • How societies have historically dealt with mass migration. • High volumes of migration that take place in East and South-East Asia. • Value that lies in having civilizational confidence. • Parag explains how Germany is breaking open the definition of what German-ness is. • A brief analysis of the migration situation in the UAE. • Primary factors which motivate the migration of Western expats. • The nuanced nature of citizenship. • Sustainability, mobility, and connectivity from the perspective of the youth of today, and Parag's opinion on where these ideas emerged from. • How definitions of community have changed, and how they are changing now. • The important role that cities are going to play in coming migrations. • Parag explains what the mobile real estate phenomenon is, and what is driving it. • Why Parag does not think de-urbanization is a major trend, although it is being talked about as if it is. • Plans that Parag has for the future. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.paragkhanna.com/ (Parag Khanna) https://futuremap.io/ (Future Map) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) Support this podcast
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 launched their e-Residency program; this means that almost anyone, almost anywhere in the world, can become an e-resident of Estonia. Currently, if e-residents were a city, they would be the third biggest city in Estonia! If you're wondering why obtaining an Estonian e-ID card is an appealing option, you'll get all the answers in today's episode. We also discuss the various reasons why the Estonian government is so ahead of the curve in terms of digitization, how they have assisted their population in making the transition to digital platforms as seamless as possible, challenges that they have experienced, and what they hope to achieve in the coming years. Key Points From This Episode: • Estonia's advanced level of digitization, and what their e-Residency program is. • Lauri shares what his professional background in the tech space consisted of. • Similarities and differences between working in technology companies and working for government organizations. • Factors that resulted in the Estonian government's early embrace of the internet. • How Estonia's approach to electronic ID cards differs to most other European countries. • Lauri explains the mechanics of an E-ID card. • Estimated percentages of the Estonian population who make use of Estonia's various E-platforms. • Ways that Estonia ensures their e-Platforms are secure and their approach to privacy. • How the Estonian government attracts talent to its technology department. • Some examples which highlight the constraints of some traditional procurement processes. • The value of working in different types of organizations. • Challenges that come with the growth of an organization or department. • An e-Government program that was drastically accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. • Two main reasons that people will sign up for the Estonian e-Residency program. • The percentage of new businesses in Estonia over the past 3 years that are owned by e-Residents. • How the government is going to determine whether or not the e-Residency program is beneficial to Estonia. • Technology that underpins key public infrastructure in Estonia. • Countries which are following in Estonia's footsteps, and how Lauri feels about this. • Lauri shares his opinion on the work being done by Propsera. • How being an EU member affects Estonia's e-Residency program. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurihaav/?originalSubdomain=ee (Lauri Haav on LinkedIn) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) Support this podcast
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 Society of Arts Changed a Nation, where he unpacks this organizations. In today's episode, Anton offers insights into the RSA and how it has evolved over time. At different moments in history, it has played significant roles in influencing the social landscape. We hear about where the organization finds itself today and where some of the opportunities lie moving into the future. As a historical hub for innovation and invention, the RSA drew some formidable forces into its ranks. Our conversation also touches on the social status of inventors and how this can change, what we know about the nature of inventions, and whether you have to be an expert to be an inventor. Tune in to hear it all! Key Points From This Episode: • What The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce is. • Understanding a national improvement agency and the role it plays. • Hear about what the draw of joining the RSA was. • Precursors to the RSA and some of the problems with these organizations. • Some of the changes the RSA undergoes in the 19th century. • How the Great Exhibition of 1851 changed the landscape. • How the 1800 utilitarian movement in the UK was similar to the progressive movement in the late 19th Century in the U.S. • The influence that the utilitarian idea had on examinations and the long-lasting impact. • The RSA's work in conservationism and what the springboard for this was. • Prince Phillip's interest in conservation and how he influenced the RSA. • What the RSA does today and what the future has in store for the organization. • Opportunities Anton believes are being missed with the current structure of the RSA. • How Anton would structure the new world fair and the sectors he would include. • The importance of being able to showcase competing interests in public. • Suggestions for how we can raise the social status of inventors. • We should encourage innovation across all sectors of society. • What Anton would do if he had 100 million dollars to change the status of the sciences. • Which inventions were invented after their time and the consequence of this. • What separates inventors from everyone else in society. • How to build a culture of innovation and invention in a city or country. • The reason that Anton left conventional academia. • Unpacking the link between expertise and invention. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: http://linkedin.com/in/antonhowes/?originalSubdomain=uk (Anton Howes) https://www.amazon.com/Arts-Minds-Society-Changed-Nation/dp/0691182647 (Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation) https://www.thersa.org/ (The RSA) https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Spring-Rachel-Carson/dp/0618249060 (Silent Spring) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) Support this podcast
Mark Lutter is the Founder and Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute. CCI's aim is to build an ecosystem for charter cities We talk about - The basic concepts of charter cities - What is the biggest misconception about charter cities? - What personality type does it take to run a non profit? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pradyumna-sp/message
In this Geoeconomics Podcast episode, Aleksa Burmazovic talks with Kurtis Lockhart from the Charter Cities Institute about how cities work, what governance must do to adapt, and how the next 15 years will look like in the governance and human cohabitation spaces. Don't miss the Charter Cities Handbook:https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ Charter Cities Institute Twitter:@CCIdotCity Kurtis' Website:https://kurtislockhart.com/contact/ This podcast was produced by the Adrianople Group. The Adrianople Group is a business intelligence firm that focuses on special economic zones, venture capital, private equity, and geoeconomics. For more information, please visit: https://www.adrianoplegroup.com/ https://twitter.com/geoeconomicspod?l... This podcast is licensed under Creative Commons with Attribution #Podcast #Adrianople #AdrianopleGroup #Geoeconomics #Economics #Infrastructure #Geopolitcs #Interview #Expert #Trade #Zone #Economy #Markets #Industrial #FreeTradeZone #FreeTrade #Business #Development #Sustainable #Knowledge #Money #Regulations #Law #Legal #Governance #SEZ #Investment #Routes #China #CharterCitiesInstitute #Future #Cities #City #CitiesofTomorrow #Book #Books #CharterCity #CharterCities #NewCity #SmartCity #SmartCities #Government #2030 #Market #Institute #Study #MarkLutter
Mark Lutter has a PhD in economics from George Mason University and is the Founder and Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute. He joins the podcast to talk about his vision of how privately run cities can help end poverty. The discussion includes topics such as the philosophy behind charter cities, mistakes made by the charter city movement in the past, and ongoing projects. Richard and Mark also talk about intellectual entrepreneurship, what the success of China means for American cultural hegemony, the narrowness of academic thought, and why smart young people should seek careers outside of the university.
Kurtis Lockhart is a PhD candidate at Oxford, and Head of Research at the Charter Cities Institute. His research interests focus on the political economy of development. He joins us to talk about charter cities and the role they can play in reforming institutions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mark Lutter is the Founder and Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute, a nonprofit building the ecosystem for charter cities. Before this he worked as Lead Economist for a fund investing in early stage charter cities. He has a PhD in economics from George Mason University and a BS in Math from the University of Maryland, College Park.
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 bad construction. Poor building practices often mean cost overrun and surplus extraction and Alon attributes them to cultural elitism, isomorphic mimicry, the ‘design-build plague', and the hollowing out of the public sector, depending on what country he is speaking about. In the case of the US, part of the reason for the bloated cost premium is a refusal to accept and adopt better building practices from outside its borders and the continued use of outdated models. For some lower-income countries discussed, we see a tendency to adopt practices used by countries perceived to be superior, even though their practices are inherently bad or might not be relevant in a new context. Our conversation also covers recommendations for how a lower-income country like Lagos might approach subway building and the best examples they should follow. For a conversation packed with examples of how political conditions, cultural tendencies, and legal practices influence railway infrastructure building in different countries and the effects this has on cost, be sure to tune in today. Key Points From This Episode: • How Alon got interested in infrastructure while riding NYC trains. • Definitions of different rail-based transport types to be found in cities. • Cost differences of constructing different rail-based transport across the globe. • Cultural elitism and why there is a cost premium on American rapid transit. • The high cost of rail transport construction in countries whose planning logistics happen in English and are inherited from America. • A deterioration in building practices leading to higher construction costs in America. • The spread of a design-build plague in America and from America outward. • The role of perceived externality and NIMBYism in producing cost overrun and surplus extraction. • Hollowing out of the public sector and the overabundance of informal pressures in the private sector. • The issue of environmental protection laws being enforced by lawsuits rather than internal bureaucracy. • The evolution of high-cost building techniques in New York. • Perspectives on effective bureaucracy and the politics of railway building practices in Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. • How the cost of mega infrastructure projects will evolve considering China and America's influences. • The role of isomorphic mimicry and cultural abnegation in inheriting poor building practices. • Different cultural practices around how close to the city to put that stop's station. • Why optimizing for security instead of transportation effectiveness is paranoid. • Problems with Biden's infrastructure plan including the budget for State of Good Repair. • The hallucination that the Anglosphere is the best; American tendencies to point out imagined problems in other cultures as an argument against adopting cheaper methods. • How Lagos or low-income countries should approach building a subway. • Perspectives on the internet and outside voices influencing on-the-ground challenges. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter)... Support this podcast
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 bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness, hearing Erin firstly sketch out what she calls the dual habitus brain. In the pockets of effectiveness Erin studied, she found that many of the participants shared an educational profile which they melded with their knowledge of local conditions. We consider other possible causes of pockets of effectiveness such as team dynamics, the ability to use discretion, systems for reward and the acceptance of failure, and human motives that are difficult to measure formally. We also consider some of the characteristics that keep these pockets of effectiveness robust, a particularly unexpected one being the characteristic of built-in redundancy. Other themes discussed are whether the recent discovery of oil poses a threat to Ghanaian pockets of effectiveness, Erin's personal approach to effective bureaucratic management, and a whole lot more. So for an episode packed with personal anecdotes and local case studies from Ghana and beyond tune in today! Key Points From This Episode: • How bureaucracies are made up of human beings, not just rules. • Erin's experiences of Ghanaian culture; food, people, and her fieldwork. • Perspectives on the idea that there is a lot of variation within states. • Why Erin's research began with identifying high-performing groups of the state. • The common educational profile of people in Ghanaian pockets of effectiveness. • Better transnational institutional transfer after melding foreign practices in a local context. • How the idea of the ‘founding team' factors into pockets of effectiveness. • What principal agent theory gets wrong when studying bureaucracies. • Perspectives on agency autonomy and how it plays into cultivating pockets of effectiveness. • How the charter city can become its own pocket of effectiveness. • Examples of how discretion is a motivating force for people who are pro-socially minded. • How systems of reward and acceptance of failure can drive motivation. • Perspectives on the role of clustering and agglomeration in shaping new culture in cities and pockets of effectiveness. • The role of redundancy in keeping pockets of effectiveness more stable. • Whether the recent discovery of oil in Ghana poses a threat to pockets of effectiveness. • The role of informal characteristics in accomplishing tasks in organizations and how these are measured. • Contrasts and connections between ‘positive deviance', ‘problem-driven iterative adaptation', and pockets of effectiveness theories. • Why Erin is skeptical about the idea of changing civil service codes in Ghana. • Erin's personal approach to effective bureaucratic management. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) https://www.linkedin.com/company/charter-cities-institute/ (Charter Cities Institute on LinkedIn) https://sociology.nd.edu/people/erin-mcdonnell/ (Erin McDonnell) https://www.nd.edu/ (University of Notre Dame) https://www.amazon.com/Patchwork-Leviathan-Bureaucratic-Effectiveness-Developing-ebook/dp/B07XKFC7YF (Patchwork Leviathan)... Support this podcast
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 findings. Our conversation begins with a discussion on the foundational piece by Michael Clemens, ‘Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk'. This paper finds that the marginal immigrant to the United States from a developing country can expect a fourfold increase in their wages, and the result of a global, free migration policy would be to increase global GDP by about 50% to 150%. Alex then unpacks why immigrating would be the most efficient option for improving an immigrant's life. He responds to the arguments that immigrants should improve their home countries rather than immigrate and that the home countries of immigrants will worsen thanks to ‘brain drain'. Later in our conversation, Alex addresses the deep roots theory which proposes that the ancestry metrics of societies influence their GDP per capita. He then weighs in on whether culture impacts economic production. We hear about the central finding of Wretched Refuse, which is that immigrants don't worsen economic institutions in places where they go and in some cases improve them. Wrapping up, Alex shares his perspectives on changing immigration visa laws in the US and what the next ten years might hold in that respect. Tune in today! Key Points From This Episode: • The argument that immigration does not destroy the institutions responsible for prosperity in the modern world to be found in Alex's book. • Why immigrants from Yemen will 16X their salary after moving to the US. • Alex's response to the ‘Why don't immigrants fix their home country rather?' argument. • The question of brain drain when immigrants leave their home countries and why matters are more complex than this. • Why the overall economic gains immigrants offer to the US outweigh the threat they pose to some salaries. • Why Alex is a skeptic when it comes to the deep roots argument for prosperity. • Perspectives on the many reasons for why economic status of a country can change. • The impacts of culture and trust on economic growth and whether immigrants erode this. • Examples of mass immigrations to countries with poor institutions that experienced massive economic reforms in a liberalizing direction as a result. • Alex's thoughts on shifting H1B visa allocation from a lottery to a wage-based system. • How the heartland visa system might encourage higher rates of legal immigration. • What Alex thinks will happen around immigration liberalization in the next 10 years. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) https://www.linkedin.com/company/charter-cities-institute/ (Charter Cities Institute on LinkedIn) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/people/jeffrey-mason#:~:text=Prior%20to%20joining%20the%20Charter,and%20the%20Bipartisan%20Policy%20Center. (Jeffrey Mason) https://www.cato.org/people/alex-nowrasteh (Alex Nowrasteh) https://www.cato.org/ (CATO Institute Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity) https://www.amazon.com/Wretched-Refuse-Political-Immigration-Institutions/dp/1108477631 (Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions) https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.25.3.83 (‘Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk')... Support this podcast
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 explores which institutions best enable adaptation. A major focal point of Yuen Yuen's research is China's rise since 1978. We open our conversation with Yuen Yuen by asking her about how her cultural nomadism has put her in a good position to understand China's impressive 43-year development. After hearing how her experiences in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States have helped her gain a useful perspective on her studies, we dive into the concept of complex development and talk about why its needs are greater than ever. Following this, we talk to Yuen Yuen about her two books, namely China's Gilded Age and How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. To help listeners understand China's meteoric rise in development, Yuen Yuen compares the state to Mcdonald's and the concept of franchising. She touches on their powerful nature of being centralized, yet having versatility through local variation. China's “franchised” development is also linked to the way they have used corruption to bolster their development. That isn't to say that corruption is good though, as Yuen Yuen rather points out how corruption changes in tandem with development. To hear more on China's current state, their trajectory, and much much more, join us in this deeply insightful and thought-provoking episode. Key Points From This Episode: ● Introducing today's guest, Yuen Yuen Ang. ● How cultural nomadism has helped Yuen Yuen's approach to development processes. ● Yuen Yuen talks about Singapore's most underrated development factors. ● Hear about Yuen Yuen's background working in complexity studies. ● The best book that helped Yuen Yuen get to grips with complexity studies. ● Yuen Yuen tells us about her book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. ● We boil down development into its most fundamental forms, as written about in How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. ● Why a lot of people in international development are uncomfortable with Yuen Yuen's book. ● Comparing Chinese bureaucracy to Mcdonald's. ● The role of SEZs in China. ● We talk to Yuen Yuen about her most recent book, China's Gilded Age. ● Exploring the nature of corruption in capitalism and how it morphs over time. ● How China's corruption has evolved as the country has developed. ● Yuen Yuen contrasts her two books. ● Hear about China's grand crackdown on corruption. ● The drawbacks and doubts that come from China's efforts to reduce corruption. ● Yuen Yuen talks about her published articles on the Belt and Road Initiative. ● Hear about the beehive campaign. ● We answer: Will China become a technological leader of the future? ● Stay tuned to hear details on Yuen Yuen's upcoming book. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter)... Support this podcast
Charter cities can bring long-term economic growth through business and innovation enabled by well-functioning institutions. Mark Lutter, founder of the Charter Cities Institute, talks to OMFIF's Kat Usita about the benefits that charter cities bring and successful examples.
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 how his book appeals to both sides of the political spectrum, despite the backlash that his ideas have received. We compare historical US immigration with the current economic climate before looking into why immigration doesn't necessarily lead to infrastructural challenges, as is often argued. While reflecting on how policy choices impact public projects, we touch on the COVID vaccine rollout and explore issues within America's political culture. Later, we hear Matthew's take on whether an ascendant China will forge a stronger America, the positive effects of inclusive American nationalism, and how giving people access to opportunity fosters innovations. Near the end of the episode, we chat about how policy affects birth rates, how zoning reforms might inspire stronger agglomeration, and why Matthew left Vox. Matthew presents a clear vision for how we can increase national prosperity. Tune to hear more of his insights. Key Points From This Episode: • Introducing today's guest, Vox co-founder and journalist Matthew Yglesias. • Exploring the premise of Matthew's book, One Billion Americans. • The benefits of immigration and how it has led to American greatness. • Why Matthew received more support from conservative readers than he had anticipated. • Comparing early US immigration with the current economic climate. • The challenge of building new infrastructure and the case against immigration. • How policy choices impact the effectiveness of large public projects. • The dangers of caring more about your political side than solving problems. • Examining how different nations have responded to COVID. • From seeing China as a threat to being more proud of the US, Matthew shares factors that could lead to a stronger America. • Why access to opportunity leads to innovation and growth. • Ways that policy can increase national birth rates. • How the conversation around birth rates has become controversial. • Zoning laws and the impact they have on agglomeration. • Hear why Matthew now publishes on Substack and not Vox. • Why don't we get a billion Americans by creating charter cities. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-yglesias-6ba5716/ (Matthew Yglesias on LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/mattyglesias (Matthew Yglesias on Twitter) https://www.amazon.com/One-Billion-Americans-Thinking-Bigger-ebook/dp/B082ZR6827 (One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger on Amazon) https://www.slowboring.com/ (Slow Boring) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/people/kurtis-lockhart (Kurtis Lockhart) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) https://www.vox.com/ (Vox) https://www.vox.com/the-weeds (The Weeds Podcast) https://substack.com/ (Substack) http://www.dougsaunders.net/ (Doug Saunders) https://www.amazon.com/Maximum-Canada-Million-Canadians-Enough/dp/073527309X (Maximum Canada on Amazon) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kamala-Harris (Kamala Harris) https://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/people/professor-michael-clements (Professor Michael Clements)... Support this podcast
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 life in Benin, including how he escaped his unjust imprisonment, Leonard discusses how his personal life has informed his research. We then dive into his research into clientelism and voting behavior, slavery's prevailing influence on Benin culture, and how environmental factors can drive achievement within a community of learners. A key theme in this episode, we then ask Leonard about how he founded ASE. His answers highlight practical steps that he took along with the challenges that he overcame. Later, we talk about why he uses ASE's reputation as the benchmark for its success, his aim to link the disparate African academic community, and his plans to create a curriculum that he can export to other universities. Near the end of our conversation, we touch on Leonard's other influences and passions. Tune in for insights on what it takes to build a top university and to hear Leonard's incredible story. Key Points From This Episode: • Introducing today's guest, economics and politics professor Leonard Wantchekon. • Leonard shares his story from growing up in Benin to becoming a Princeton professor. • Hear about what motivated Leonard to become so politically active. • Exploring what Benin was like under the dictatorship of Mathieu Kérékou. • How Lenin escaped from prison and ultimately from Benin. • Why Leonard turned his back on socialist-leaning ideologies. • How Leonard's personal life has shaped his research. • Leonard's research into clientelism and voting behavior in Benin. • How aspiration can help people overcome their circumstances. • The importance of social environments in driving aspiration. • Why Leonard founded the prestigious African School of Economics in Benin. • Exploring what's needed to found a leading university. • Why Leonard uses academic reputation as the benchmark for his institution's success. • Hear about the Pan-African Research Council and how Leonard sees the future of his institute. • Where on the economics spectrum Leonard's research lies. • How the Nobel prize-winning economist Arthur Lewis inspires Leonard. • Leonard shares details about his support of African history. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://scholar.princeton.edu/lwantche/home (Leonard Wantchekon) https://twitter.com/lwantchekon (Leonard Wantchekon on Twitter) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/people/kurtis-lockhart (Kurtis Lockhart) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) https://africanschoolofeconomics.com/ (The African School of Economics) https://scholar.harvard.edu/nunn/home (Nathan Nunn) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/post/charter-cities-podcast-episode-17-historical-events-and-economic-development-with-nathan-nunn (Episode with Nathan Nunn) https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/kerekou-ahmed-mathieu-1933 (Mathieu Kérékou) https://www.ulaval.ca/ (Laval University) https://www.ubc.ca/ (The University of British Columbia) https://www.northwestern.edu/ (Northwestern University) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Marx (Karl Marx)... Support this podcast
Mark Lutter is the founder of the Charter Cities Institute. We find out just what Charter Cities are, why we should care about them, and how they can improve the lives of millions of humans across the globe.
Digital technology has evolved to the point that by hitting keys and tapping mice buttons, you can literally build a city in the cloud. This viral idea was started by angel investor Balaji Srinivasan, who believes in creating cities with crowd-funded territories and governed by smart contracts. In our conversation with Balaji, we touch on many intricate topics that link to two concepts — using tech to design ideal cities and how innovation is driven by exit strategies. Early in the episode, we dive into the future of America, and the rest of the world, as we explore the country's politics, geography, military, and intellectual power. After discussing why it's so difficult to get anything done in the US, Balaji talks about why people might soon begin emigrating from America. From cryptocurrency to Indians recognizing the success of Indian immigrants, Balaji shares his insights on how exits and alternative strategies can be the leading force behind change. Following this, we begin unpacking the ideas behind Balaji's cloud city, the reasons that cities have historically been founded, and the many benefits of designing a city according to your group identity. Reflecting Balaji's ‘digital first' mindset, we chat about how innovations in the physical world can be driven through digital simulation before discussing why risk-aversion is the enemy of progress. An episode filled with carefully considered arguments and counter-arguments, tune in to hear more about Balaji Srinivasan's incredible vision of the future. Key Points From This Episode: • Hear why podcast host Mark sees a brighter future for the US than anywhere else. • How robotics will have a greater impact on national outcomes than demographics. • Mark and Balaji debate the question— “Is this the Chinese decade or the Chinese century?” • Arguments for why US power might be vastly overestimated. • How the internet is being segmented by different nation's regulations. • Why America can be considered an empire in decline. • Comparing India in the 80s with present-day America. • The benefits of seeing people of your heritage be successful within other models and areas. • How creating successful alternative models can lead to reform. • Balaji explains why there might be a mass exodus of people leaving America. • Exploring the types of people who will emigrate from America. • Using current technology to build a city in the cloud. • How a ‘digital first' approach can bring down costs when building a city. • The three reasons why cities are often founded. • Benefits to physically grouping yourself in a city with other like-minded people. • Aligning groups of people and the challenge that comes from having huge online communities. • How people prioritize their many identity expressions to determine what's intrinsic to who they are. • Pushing innovation in the physical world through digital simulation. • Why risk or degrees of “Anarchy” will always come before innovation. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/people/mark-lutter (Mark Lutter) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/ (Charter Cities Institute on Facebook) https://balajis.com/ (Balaji Srinivasan) https://www.linkedin.com/in/balajissrinivasan/ (Balaji Srinivasan on LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/balajis (Balaji Srinivasan on Twitter) https://www.nato.int/ (NATO) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Snowden (Edward Snowden) https://www.biography.com/political-figure/emmanuel-macron (Emmanuel Macron)... Support this podcast
What is progress, has it slowed down, and what can we do about it? Joining us today to talk about the emerging field of progress studies and how it might help us dig into questions like these, is Jason Crawford, author of the blog, Roots Of Progress. Jason opens by providing us with a definition of progress and why the active study of it might help us rekindle it in our world. We talk about how progress has increasingly dwindled next. In the late 19th and early 20th century, four major progress revolutions were occurring in fields of chemical engineering, oil, electricity, and germ theory, and today we only have one, tech. In thinking about why this has occurred, we examine the stagnation hypothesis which argues that as a culture we have come to prize innovation less, we have chosen the low-hanging fruit of previous innovations to explore rather than find new ones, and regulations have grown to the extent that breakthroughs have been throttled. Jason gives his thoughts on these arguments, and also adds a fourth reason which centers around a change in funding structures for innovation. The next part of our conversation is about how we might bring back a culture of inventiveness, past examples of cities that were hubs of invention, and what the ingredients for great innovation are. Along with this, Jason shares his thoughts on what the next big movement could be before we wrap up with a discussion on the risks inherent in progress and what an effective movement for social change might look like. Key Points From This Episode: • Introducing Jason and the definition of progress, as well as the new field of progress studies. • Examples of progress that occurred without progress studies – why do we need this field? • Arguments for and against the ‘stagnation hypothesis' as a theory of slowed progress. • Four revolutions in the late1800s to early 1900s comparable to our tech revolution: chemical engineering, oil, electricity, and germ theory. • The stagnation hypothesis reframed as a consideration of what happened to the four revolutions. • Critically unpacking the ‘culture', ‘low-hanging fruit', and ‘regulation' arguments for slowing progress. • Another reason why progress might have petered out that centers around funding structures. • The heyday of corporate research versus today's progress model: Universities and ‘tech transfer'. • The difficulty of implementing high-level ideas that are possible and the role this might play. • Separating science from the corporate world and the need to merge both for more progress. • How we could bring back more of a culture of breakthroughs; new career paths and looking to the late 19th century. • Examples of do-it-yourself invention culture from today: prosthetics, automatic pancreases. • Why some cities are hubs of invention and what the ingredients for this creativity are. • Jason's thoughts about why the next major revolution might be in biotech. • Online chat spaces that allow for serendipity; inventiveness might no longer be geographically bound. • Balancing the existential risk aspect of world-ending technology with the idea of progress. • Technologies producing unforeseen dangers and how we are handling risk assessment. • How social movements can collapse and whether an effective model for social change exists. • Moving past arguments about regulation to an attitude of ‘what can actually be done.' Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/people/mark-lutter (Mark Lutter) https://twitter.com/CCIdotCity (Charter Cities Institute on Twitter) https://www.facebook.com/Charter-Cities-Institute-424204888015721/... Support this podcast
The Charter Cities Institute has seen rapid growth in recent months, having gone from three employees in February to ten as of this week, so we decided to do something a little different on today's show. Kurtis Lockhart, Head of Research at the CCI sits down with Founder, Mark Lutter, to provide a high-level overview of the concept of charter cities, why their time has come, how the CCI fits into it all, and what the future holds. The first part of the conversation is all about charter cities, how they differ from conventional ones and special economic zones, and why they are becoming more important. From there, we move onto the history of charter cities, getting into some major recent advocates of the movement and a few examples of successful semi-autonomous cities from the post-war era and what we can learn from them. We turn our attention to some of the common criticisms of charter cities next, considering the political threat they could end up posing, how they propose to be different from the countries they exist in, and how to get people to start moving into them once development commences. Following this, we explore the implementation aspect of charter cities, discussing how the CCI is approaching six things that should be considered before building one: Governance, policies, urban planning, site selection, selecting an anchor tenant, and minimizing the risk of expropriation. The last part of our conversation is all about the CCI as an organization – Mark's research that led to its founding, the challenges and successes it has seen, and the vision it has for the future. Be sure to catch this episode for an in-depth look at the potential charter cities and the CCI have to change the world for the better. Key Points From This Episode: • A high-level definition of charter cities and why they are important. • How charter cities differ from conventional cities and special economic zones. • Four aspects of charter cities that enable them to spur long-term economic development. • How the CCI's version of charter cities would be governed and set up through public/private partnerships. • Why governments would invite developers to build and collaborate on charter cities. • The amount of master plan cities being built globally and range of their value propositions. • The advantages of a charter city over a master-planned one and a regular one. • Ideal environments to build charter cities in; openness, rapid urbanization, and more. • Why now is a time where charter cities seem more valuable than ever. • Reinvigorating liberalism and the cosmopolitanism of trade cities using charter cities. • How charter cities fit into the effective altruist framework of tractability, neglectedness, and scalability. • Conceptions of scalability and the work being done to enable charter cities to scale. • A history of charter cities and how the CCI is building on Paul Romer and Patri Friedman's work. • Early examples of cities built using a degree of planning and their modern influence. • Problems with unplanned and planned cities and the ‘slow feedback loop' of cities. • Lessons to be learned from successful, semi-autonomous cities in the post-war era. • Common criticisms of charter cities and how they are based on misunderstandings. • How to get people to move to a charter city; reasons why people start and move to cities. • Why governments might expropriate their charter cities; the political threat they could pose. • Issues around building charter cities in upper or middle-income countries. • The role of incentives in charter cities being less prone to their host... Support this podcast
I had a chat with Mark Lutter, founder and executive director of Charter Cities Institutes about the potential of charter cities to boost a nation’s prosperity and development. Our conversation touched on state capacity, why American institutions appear to be failing, and why Silicon Valley elites have no political influence.You can download or listen right in the player above - or from your favourite players and podcast providers here. You can rate us here, this helps others find the show. Reference guides by CCI for people new to the idea are here. You can also read my writings on cities (here and here). TranscriptTL: Welcome to Ideas Untrapped. Joining me is Mark Lutter. Mark Lutter is an economist and he is the founder and executive director of [the] Charter Cities Institute. You're welcome, Mark. ML: Thanks for having me on. TL: Yeah briefly, please. What are Charter Cities and what do they bring to economic development? ML: Sure, so Charter Cities are new cities with a special jurisdiction that allows them to have a more competitive business environment. And we believe they are important because, over the long run, they're a key determinant of economic performance, economic outcomes and […] governance. If you have good governance, a country will do relatively well and if you have poor governance, a country will do relatively poorly. The challenge can be that it's difficult to reform governance on a national level. There's a lot of special interests groups. There's a lot of politics that goes on that sometimes make the reforms quite difficult to implement. And, Charter Cities, because they're new cities, they can be built on Greenfield sites where there are fewer special interests and because they have a special jurisdiction, it can be politically feasible to implement deeper reforms than might be possible at the national level.So these deeper reforms are to improve the business environment combined with a new city allow for more economic development to occur than otherwise might take place. So if we look at the last 40, fifty, 60 years, we've seen cities like Shenzhen, Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai emerge from practically nothing to become global metropolises. And we believe that success is replicable. Particularly because there are a little under 80 million new urban residents annually, so urbanization is growing extremely rapidly across Africa and across Asia, and we believe it's quite important to make sure that we get things right now because it's much harder to change governance, It's much harder to change infrastructure once a city is already built. And so we believe that if we can help set up this sort of right institutions now, the right set up now, the right layout of new cities now, it can basically save a lot of headaches over the next fifty [to] hundred years, and help lift tens of millions of people out of poverty and make things better for economic development. TL: Yeah, so, obviously, I'm not new to this idea and we've talked a couple of times about it. Thinking about Charter Cities, it's a big project. So what do you think are the effective financing structures that make them feasible knowing the fiscal challenges that some poor countries face?ML: Sure, so the way we think about Charter Cities is as Public-Private Partnerships with the host country. So we're not asking the host country to build the city, we're asking the host country to help create a governance framework that can make the Charter City more competitive. And we think that this is especially important now in the post-COVID world where a lot of countries, particularly in emerging markets might be resource dependent on oil and like Nigeria. Or copper, like Zambia. And prices have rebounded somewhat over the last few months, but given that they're much lower than they were a year ago, I think there is a reasonable expectation that demand will continue to be relatively low, at least, until a vaccine is discovered. And so that means these countries have big holes in their budget and will need new financing mechanisms and we view Charter Cities as potentially one of those financing mechanisms. Charter Cities, because they're new cities, they can be built on Greenfield sites where there are fewer special interests and because they have a special jurisdiction, it can be politically feasible to implement deeper reforms than might be possible at the national level - ML The Charter City would have a revenue-sharing agreement with the central government. It will be able to attract a lot of foreign investment, create a lot of economic activities, create a lot of jobs and then some of that wealth that is being created would be transferred to the central government that might be able to help plug the hole that is currently being left by low commodity prices. Additionally, we just think if you build a successful city, it will generate a tremendous amount of wealth. We're still in the early Charter Cities phases and the specifics for financing Charter Cities haven't all been sort of worked out, but the general hypothesis is 'look, if you create a successful, functioning city, then there will be a lot of wealth that is created and you just need to capture some of that wealth that can pay for the initial infrastructure investment that can pay for the costs associated with setting up and building a city. So, that's at least the eye level overview of how we think about financing Charter Cities.TL: The question of financing is important here because some would argue, and I think, Chris Blattman has actually made this argument that given the risks involved that these investments may not pay off, it's actually an objection to not doing it. How do you react to that? What are the big payoffs for charter cities as opposed to other development interventions like cash transfers and other forms of aid?ML: Sure, so, it's definitely possible that for one or more charter cities the investments will not pay off. That's the nature of an investment, they're not necessarily secure and so there is always risks associated with investments. The risks associated with charter cities might be higher depending on where the charter city is being built, depending on what the local politics are, depending on the sort of skill of the developer. But I think, I would, I guess, sort of, differentiate as to what we're talking about in terms of investment. So if we're talking about cash transfers. Cash transfers are not an investment per se. Cash transfers are a transfer of wealth. They are basically a donation. It is comparable to charity. And most of the evidence on cash transfers is relatively good. You give people more money, they're able to spend the money to get better things. Recent studies have suggested that this does have relatively long-lasting impact on improving people's lives, so I support cash transfers. Charter Cities, at least, the way we at the Charter Cities Institute conceive of them are led by private developers who are building the physical infrastructure themselves. So this is an investment, not a donation. The expectation is if you raise 700 million dollars to build a power plant, to build roads, to build water, electricity, etc, then you expect a return on that capital investment that can justify the risks associated with that particular project. So this is a commercial venture, not a development venture per se. And we believe that Charter Cities can pass this sort of commercial venture test where, okay, if people who are humanitarians want to get involved, that is great, but as a mechanism for social change, I think the profit motive tends to be important and can allow for more social change in a shorter period of time than asking everybody to change their behaviour out of the goodness of their heart. That being said, there is space for, I think, donations in the Charter Cities space. The Charter Cities Institute, for example, is a 501C3. We rely on donations. We are trying to kind of incubate this Charter Cities space, trying to bootstrap it, creating a network of different city developers, developing a set of best practices, things like that. But we have done at least internal calculations that we have published on the research portion of our website, where we look at GiveWell which is a well-known charity evaluator. And we look at GiveWell and the cost-effectiveness of various charities that they evaluate and based on some assumptions that we make about our own effectiveness and these assumptions, I believe, are quite conservative. We are comparable to the most cost-effective charities in the world; if not more effective than them. TL: Charter Cities, at least, as an idea, in its current framing, is not new. Paul Romer kind of reintroduced the idea a while back. And with implementation - Honduras, Madagascar - they've run into some problems. What are you doing differently at CCI, and how does your model differ from that proposition? ML: Sure, and that's a good question. So Paul Romer obviously pioneered this space but didn't have as much success as I think he would have liked. And what we've tried to do is learn from his impact and see how we could try to have a bit more success this time around. So first let me talk about differences with Paul Romer's model and our model for charter cities. The similarities are: both of the models involve cities with a special jurisdiction that allow them to have a different institutional framework than the rest of the country, an institutional framework that is more conducive to economic development, and to growth. Those are the similarities. I think the differences are that Paul Romer advocated a high-income country, for example, Canada administers a Charter City in a low-income country for example, Honduras. So Canada would help create the administrative structure, they would be responsible for it, and that is the mechanism by which part of Honduras could have good governance. We have not pursued that model for, I think, two reasons. One, we're not sure it's feasible. There is a lot of blowbacks associated with charter cities, we're sometimes accused of being neocolonialists, and I think having a high-income country act as a guarantor in a low-income country brings up some of those unpleasant historical memories that might make getting political buy-in a little bit more difficult. The second reason we're not pursuing that model is we're not sure it's the best model, even if you, sort of, assume away the political challenges of it. So looking at, for example, the response of many countries in the West to COVID, the US has had a relatively poor response to COVID. Our institutional capacity as somewhat decayed, we aren't as vibrant, as effective as we were 50, 60 years ago, there's a general lethargy in our own institutions, and I think that that lethargy would likely translate to helping to build new institutions in emerging markets. And so there is a question of 'is the high-income country the best institutional entity to help administer a charter city?' And we believe it is not. So what we do is we partner with new city developers. There are by Journalist Wade Shepherd...he estimates there are over 200 mass or fenced cities being built around the world right now. So we try to partner with these new city developers, typically private entities, sometimes they're public but we prefer our partner with the private ones because they tend to be a little bit more effective to figure out okay, they're building a new city which might have a hundred thousand residents, which might have a million residents, so we partner with them to try to improve their governance system. And this might mean working with the government to improve the special economic zone framework. If there is a relatively advanced special economic zone framework in place, we might work with the city developer to figure out okay, what does it actually mean to create this new administrative structure from scratch. So that's the difference in approach.I guess before I go into why I think we'll be effective, I think, a few other points. One, Paul Romer was quite effective at generating attention and, sort of, starting the conversation and working with governments, at least, up to a point. We're taking a bit more of what might be described as, sort of, a systematic approach. We're somewhat worried about the ecosystem of charter cities being too dependent on a single person or on a single country. So we try to diversify risk by partnering with a lot of different organizations, by working in a lot of different countries, by really helping to spread the idea of charter cities as far as possible such that if one project goes under a hard time or fails, there are other projects that we can shift our attention to make sure the momentum for charter cities is not lost. As to, I think why we think that we will be successful where he was unsuccessful, I think we've learned a lot from him; and in addition, I think the last 10 years, there's been a bit of an increased interest in charter cities. And then second, we're just seeing it on the ground. We have engaged two projects where we are helping them create these legal structures, these administrative entities from scratch to governing these cities. The projects have a degree of political buy-in. We are regularly reached out to by new city developers who are interested in improving governance in those cities. We're basically at the beginning of a charter city's moment, and I think over the next year, the next two years, it will become clear to everybody who isn't paying attention now that the charter city's moment is here, that these projects are real, people are building them, people are moving dirt, people are moving in, money is being raised, etc. that it is no longer just [an] academic discussion, but it is a matter of sort of on the ground, things happening and executing.TL: I mean, hearing you speak, I thought of a question, which is - to a layperson, like, what exactly are the channels of improvement to income and livelihoods in building a new city, for example?ML: Sure, so, If we look at a city like Shenzhen, 40 years ago in 1980, Shenzhen was a number of small fishing villages, the total population in the area was about a 100,000 residents. The average income was about $500 a year. It was a very impoverished area and currently, Shenzhen is the manufacturing capital of the world. It has a total population of around 20 million people, they have a subway system that rivals New York. It is a sort of, shiny, gleaming metropolis that really transformed in just 40 years. So while China had several sort of specific conditions that mean that the success of Shenzhen is unlikely to replicate at that magnitude. For example, China had first basically prevented urbanisation from occurring, so there was a pent up demand for urbanisation. As well as China had very stringent regulations and laws which had precluded a lot of economic development. And while Africa, for example, many countries have bad regulations, I'm not sure they were as bad as China in the 1980s. But that being said, we believe that a degree of that success is still possible even if you get half of Shenzhen, that's a city of ten million people, that sees your income rise by like 10, 20X over a 40 year period. That is a huge change. If you look in a lot of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, what's occurring now is called urbanization without industrialization. And this means that people are moving to cities. And typically when people move to cities, they become more productive, they are able to make more money, they live better lives, they leave their kids better off, and it's this virtual circle. And now, unfortunately, in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa this is not occurring. People are moving into cities but their productivity is not increasing, they're not making more money, and their kids are going to stuck at the same sort of level in income and quality of life that they are today. And what we believe charter cities can help do is to, I guess, help change that to help create these opportunities for these people that are currently being left behind by the global economy and to create this positive dynamic, this positive feedback cycle that leads to people's incomes being increased by 5 percent per year, 10 percent per year. Which because of the power of compounding interest, if your income is increasing at 5 percent per year, that means, every 14 years, your income doubles. So 28 years later, your income will be four times what it was originally. Forty-two years later, which is about the total working life of an adult (about 42 years), your income will be 8 times what it was when you started. You've seen an 8 fold increase in income, [which] is just tremendous. So if we can help create that dynamic, if we can help generate this type of growth, I think that will lead toad to a big improvement in a lot of people's lives.TL: It's interesting you talked about Shenzhen before we move into the specifics of that. Shenzhen is usually described as a special economic zone. Is that different from Charter Cities, or is essentially the same thing? ML: Sure. So, Special Economic Zones. We consider Charter Cities to be a subset of Special Economic Zones. The special economic zone is just an area that says that the laws of the host country don't apply to this area, or like some subset of the laws. But typically, special economic zones tend to be relatively narrow in their focus. They might only encompass an industrial park, they might only be a few dozen or a few hundred acres. They have a relatively set degree of difference from the host country in terms of laws, so it might have lower taxes or it might have a one-stop-shop but they don't really have this deep regulatory reforms. They tend to focus on a single industry, so maybe textile, manufacturing or maybe electronics, they aren't broad-based. Very rarely do special economic zones have residential. And lastly, they tend to be too small to generate sustained economic growth. If you have an industrial park that might be successful, that might create a lot of jobs but that's not really going to create this dynamic positive feedback cycle like a city can. Shenzhen whilst frequently described as a special economic zone, at least, according to our definition, it is more like a charter city. The jurisdiction is 320 square kilometres, so that's the size of a city. It is multi-use. They have residential, they have commercial, they have industrial. They have the sort of full dynamics that you expect to see in a city with a lot of different economic parts moving. There was a lot of authority devolved from the central government to the city government. So while many special economic zones might only have like a tax incentive, basically in Shenzhen, with the exception of military and like Mail distribution, you can almost experiment with whatever you want you on the Shenzhen city level. And that allowed for a lot more autonomy than most special economic zones allow. So while Shenzhen is sort of colloquially referred to as a special economic zone, it fits our definition and our understanding of what a charter city is a little bit more closely than most special economic zones around the world which are quite different from Shenzhen and as such haven't had the same impact that Shenzhen has had.TL: Two-part Shenzhen question here. I agree with you, Shenzhen fits better with what you are describing. I mean, there was an industrial zone in Shekou, and of course, there was the whole area that was developed for all kinds of things, tourism and the rest. Now, the first question is that there was a lot of planning and execution in making Shenzhen work. How does the administrative capacity of the host country, how does it affect the execution of a Charter City?ML: Sure, and I think this is an important point. One of the increasing discussions in economics and international development has been focusing on state capacity in which the administrative capacity of a country or a government can be thought of as - are they able to execute on tasks in a timely and effective manner? So a country with this higher state capacity would be able to build a road cheaper and more quickly than a country with a lower state capacity. And in Shenzhen it was the local government that administered the city. China has had 3000 years [of] history of statehood. So they have a lot of experience in capacity with administrating cities and they just had to adapt it the circumstances at hand. And I think one of the challenges in some emerging markets is that there isn't that long history of statehood. There isn't that long history of administrative capacity, and so the current governments are not being very effective in administering the entire country. So if they start to administer a charter city, you would see a similar type of dysfunction. To solve this problem, we are advocating a special jurisdiction with a separate administration from the host country. And so the city would remain part of the host country, it would be governed by a separate bureaucratic apparatus, it would have different standards for hiring, different standards for firing, different standards for promotion, etc, which would allow it to develop a more effective administration than the host country. And so, to this end, we're engaged in [a] sort of early-stage discussion about helping to establish this administrative apparatuses and we're beginning to think about what it means to develop a pipeline of administrators for a Charter City that would help [to] work with educational establishment to create certificates, to create courses that might help teach you how to administer a charter city. 'Cause this is sort of a monumental challenge, there are so many moving parts and you don't really want to hire people from the host country because then they bring the bad culture of the host country government, they bring the sort of, I don't know… the sclerosis that often exists in host countries' bureaucracies that leads to the need for charter cities. But you don't want to transplant that bureaucratic dysfunction to the charter city, so you would have to basically create a new administrative system and a new education system to train those administrators. TL: Yeah, so with the special jurisdiction, what guarantees continuity? I'm imagining that the government of the host country would still have some form of authority over that jurisdiction however limited. And what guarantees that another administration does not come in and say, 'Oh, yeah, well, for political reasons or whatever, we're going to withdraw our support for this.' Or is there a specific framework that you've outlined which guarantees long-term autonomy?ML: Sure. I'm glad you asked that question, that is one of the challenges for charter cities. How do you ensure that there is administrative continuity in the charter city and the host country hasn't changed their mind and limit some of the authority that they had previously granted to the charter city? We are seeing that, for example, right now in Hong Kong, where the Chinese government is passing a national security law that many on Hong Kongers believe changed the sort of terms of the agreement in 1997 when Hong Kong was transferred from the British to the Beijing government. There is no silver bullet for preventing, right? You can't do a magic trick and say 'alright, there is no risk of expropriation of the charter city' but there are a number of strategies that can be developed to mitigate that risk, and in fact, we published an outline of these strategies on our website called the Risk Mitigation Guide. It is in the reference guides. And it should give an understanding of strategies that can be taken to mitigate that risk. So basically, they're business project, they need to be profitable while obviously they're political projects as well. They need to get buy-in from the host country and so there are several ways to do that. First, you need to make sure that the development of the charter city itself has an extensive stakeholder management engagement in the planning processes. So you need to work closely with the host country at the central government, you probably want to work closely with the local government, whether it's state or provincial to make sure that you acquire the land justly, to make sure there is buy-in. You could, for example, offer the state or the national government an equity stake in the charter city to align interests of the government with the charter city itself. Second, you probably want to involve business and community leaders in the charter city. Successful institutional change requires the allegiance of the ruling elite, so making sure that there is an incentive for those people who are particularly influential in the country to align with the success of the charter city is important. Third, you probably want to attract industries that create a lot of jobs. It is politically difficult to change something if a lot of jobs are being created, if a lot of investment is being had, things like this. So, make it more difficult for the politicians to take action against the charter city by creating a lot of jobs, by making it successful, etc. Third, most countries in the world are signatories to a variety of international treaties. So if you sign a contract with the host country and they expropriate you, depending on how you draft that language, you might be able to go and sue them in the international court, and if you win to confiscate their overseas assets. This is basically a last-ditch solution. If you get to this stage you've already lost. But it might help sort of as a bit of a deterrent against host country trying to confiscate your assets by demonstrating that there is some recourse to that action of expropriation. Another strategy is to list the city on the Stock Exchange. So after 10 or 15 years after the city is successful, maybe you put a listing on the local Stock Exchange for a certain percentage of the value of the developer who has built out the city. What does this mean? Well, this oftentimes, the pension funds and other sorts of financial managers will buy that stock and so pension funds and these financial managers tend to be relatively politically powerful and therefore if their future income streams are depending on the success of the charter city, then the host country might be less likely to take actions against the charter city. And Lastly, I think just to really emphasize the first point - it's very important to make sure charter cities are integrated with the local government, with the community - that the benefits of charter cities are being widespread. The best way, I think, to ensure that there's a minimum of risk of expropriation is just to make sure that it becomes very apparent that the charter city is being successful, it's creating jobs, that everybody is being engaged and participating in the upside of a charter city. TL: The second part question is that… I mean, I'm glad you talked about local governance. In building a charter city, I imagine there are allocative decisions that the government would have to make. I compare Shenzhen to maybe some other initiative like Gurgaon in India and one thing the Chinese government had with Shenzhen is that it still maintained control over the allocation of land. And, at least in my opinion, that allowed some kind of diverse development in terms of the industrial and residential developments that took place, and also in the building of public goods, in the provision of public goods generally. But what you see, at least, I wouldn't call them charter cities, with projects like Eko Atlantic City and others of such is that, yes, they are planned but, maybe for financial reasons, the allocative decisions are made solely for real estate developments. Maybe that helps in recouping some of the investment. So, I guess what I'm asking is, where should the allocative decisions lie to create the proper incentive for a truly income enhancing city to develop?ML: Sure, yeah, and I think that is an important question and looking at Shenzhen versus Gurgaon in India. Gurgaon is quite interesting, for the listeners who don't know, basically because of this sort of historical quirk, there was no government which allowed for no zoning and land use regulations and so a lot of tech companies and sort of large companies went and built offices there, advanced infrastructure there, so it has a lot of office buildings, things like that but because there is no governing structure, the public infrastructure tends to be quite poor. So if I remember correctly, there are basically no sewers, most of the buildings have to run on generators. It allows this freedom to build but it combines that with this lack of government. While Shenzhen, the government has been relatively effective in providing public goods, at creating an open space that allows for its success. And I think if we look at all the planned cities around the world being built today, Eko Atlantic being one example, I think you capture it well in saying that they are real estate, they're not really cities. So, real estate you tend to define everything very carefully, it's 'we build a thousand houses and we sell them each for this much money and this is what the margins are' etc, while a city is evolutionary, it's dynamic. The sort of level of planning of the city government tends to be much smaller. It's not saying we're going to build an apartment building here and we're going to build a commercial district here. It's trying to create the enabling conditions for growth and for success. And what we're trying to do is trying to kind of change the conversation with some of these new city developers to focus on more of an inclusive model where it's aimed at a broader set of residents. Where right now a lot of the new cities are aimed at sort of upper middle income or above, but how can you push the price point down? So one of the projects that we're working on is a document that is tentatively called a draft master plan. What this will do is it will be a master plan for a charter city. We're thinking about having it on 30,000 acres with 1 million residents, but we're explicitly targeting an income level of $1500 annually, which is a little under, I think, the per capita income of Nigeria. It's comparable to the per capita income of Zambia, of Kenya. We're explicitly trying to develop a model where it's accessible to this broad income segment, but we're not saying these are the types of houses that people would already build, we're just kind of thinking about okay, where is the infrastructure going to be? How do we attract an anchor tenant? How do we attract residents? How do we make it dynamic such that people's incomes increase over time? It's possible to build a sort of exclusive gated community where high-income people go and live and work and they end up being quite comfortable there, and I encourage people to do that. That's just not the model that we are particularly interested in. And I think it might be a good business venture but it has limited implications for [the] broader society and what we're interested in is how we can help effect social change to generate economic development and to lift people out of poverty, and I think to do that, it's important to help make sure charter cities are inclusive, allow for all segments of society experience the benefits of living in a fast-growing and dynamic city. TL: A bit of a curveball, so to speak, here. There's a lot of planning involved in charter cities. Do you think that that's a challenge to a free-market model of development?If you look in a lot of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, what's occurring now is called urbanization without industrialization. - MLML: In a way, I mean, I'm sure some market-oriented economist might not like what we are doing. I remember when I was doing my PhD at George Mason I was chatting about this with some people, they were like: well, how do you plan? But if we remember the Keynes versus Hayek rap video, the question is 'who plans for who?' So there always need to be some level of planning, right? We do it on an individual level. We do it on a corporate level, even government does it on some level. If you're just planning for, how many police, how many courts? What should the military do? Things like that. And so we might be taking a slightly more active role in planning than some free markets economists might advocate for in terms of thinking about what the anchor tenant should be, how to attract them, how to create these sort of supply linkages. In the draft master plan that we're developing, we are thinking about basically how to create a type of industrial policy because what we want is, okay, when it starts, maybe you focus on textile manufacturing or some relatively low skilled type of employment, but how do we make sure there is skill transfer over time such that the city can move its way up the value chain, can create more jobs and can have this positive dynamic to help lift people out of poverty rather than just being stuck at textile manufacturing now and then 30 years from now? TL: That's interesting. I spoke with Garett Jones, and one of the things he proposed that developing countries [should] try to do is to become an attractive destination for high skilled labour, you know, a labour quality argument of sorts. Do you think charter cities can be a channel for such attraction of high quality, high skilled labour to developing countries which obviously has benefits?ML: Yeah, I think it can. A charter city if developed correctly will probably be more safe than the host country because the place will be more effective. The charter city will be more dynamic. There will be more opportunities and so if there is a high skilled worker who are in their early career and want to do it abroad. Or maybe their ancestors are from a country and want to sort of return and kind of give back or maybe they are first-generation immigrant and want to give back, then I think a charter city would be a probably more attractive place to live than the rest of the host country because it would be more dynamic. There will be more opportunities. It would be a more exciting place to live. That being said, I think I disagree slightly with Garett Jones on the premise...you definitely want the higher-skilled workers for the knowledge transfer. It depends on exactly what he means by this, but Dubai, for example, was able to attract a lot of high skilled workers primarily from Europe, while Shenzhen developed without that many highly skilled workers. They had a lot of investment from Hong Kong. And they had a lot of managerial talent that could come from Hong Kong. So I think it's quite important to, I guess, create these linkages with different areas, different cities that can help the skills transfer process, and then you probably also want to help high skilled workers come in to fill senior administrative positions. But I think to make sure charter cities are scalable, the vast majority of the new urban residents over the next 30 years are not going to be highly skilled. They're going to be relatively impoverished coming from rural areas. We're not going to have sort of the skills that we typically associate with the modern economy, and I think what is important is to realize that and to create systems and processes to allow them to improve their skills, to allow them to get better, to allow them to, sort of, transform the city into somewhere that they would be proud to call home. TL: I'm curious. What exactly made you, Mark Lutter, interested in this problem? Why did you choose to work on this other than teaching at GMU or writing papers and other things you could have done as an academic?ML: Sure. Well, I'm not sure I could have done that much as an academic. I'm a pretty mediocre academic, I like getting my hands dirty a little bit more. LaughsWhat initially got me interested? I heard a talk where the speaker mentioned Michael [indistinct] and who tried to start a Freeport in Somaliland. And in fact, there is now a Freeport being built in Somaliland by Dubai Ports World in Berbera. And basically, what got me interested was I saw it as an Idea that has massive potential that not that many people were paying attention to and talking about and it got me really excited and so I stayed interested in it and sort of realized that I could have a meaningful contribution to making this, I think, really exciting idea take place. And that's why I've stayed interested in it. I like things that can have a big impact and to me, charter cities are one of the things that might be able to have the biggest impact in the 21st century and so it's quite exciting to be involved. TL: So how important is geography in the development of charter cities? I know proximity to ports is very important to facilitate trade. So, but how does it really feature in your own model?ML: Sure, so geography is obviously quite important because - are you on a trading route? Is there an urbanising population that you can draw from? What are the industries that in the area that you can sort of help supplement? We typically think about locating a charter city has being independent on several factors. You probably want to be within about 2 hours of an urban centre so you can piggyback back off their infrastructure because building an airport or a port is very expensive, but if you are within two hours of them you can acquire a large enough chunk of land to build the city because one of the challenges of building a charter city is actually getting enough land to build the city itself. But if you're 2 hours away, you might be able to acquire enough land but you're still close enough that you can access their airport, that you can kind of access their labour market, that you'll allow for a bit more trade than would take place if you were in the middle of nowhere.Like, you want to be on emerging trade routes. So for example, there's a lot of activities going on in East Africa right now. A lot of people are building ports there. That might be an opportunity for a charter city there. Thinking about how new technology might change sort of migration patterns. Maybe the Hyperloop comes, or maybe supersonic jets come, how does that change human sort of spatial organization? And then can you identify opportunities to locate cities because of that? There might be [an] opportunity for a charter city, for example, in Canada or maybe in Central Asia because Siberia and Northern Canada, with global warming, are going to open up and allow for more agriculture, for more natural resource extraction, things like that. So there will be a demand for people to live there and a new city might allow for it to become sort of a gateway to those respective regions. So basically looking at how human sort of trade and human migration patterns are occurring and then trying to identify those long-term trends and then build in a place that can take advantage of those trends to become a regional hub and provide services to the broader area.TL: The reason I asked that question is this. Someone like Paul Romer I think in his paper with Brandon Fuller would say - you need to build X amount of cities to take the addition we're going to see to the number urban dwellers by the middle of the century. I think their own calculation added about 3 billion additional people living in cities. But someone like Alain Bertaud will say you may not really have that much quality location to do what you want to do, at least, to have the kind of effect that you have in mind. So does geography, giving that land is fixed...does geography limit the potential of [a] charter city in a way? ML: Yeah it could, but this is a question that I think is dependent on data. Alain says that most of the good ports have already been taken. He's probably true (right) about that too a certain extent, because humans being, sort of, social, commerce-oriented mammals will tend to live in areas that are advantageous for that. So a lot of the natural ports already, probably have some degree of human settlement there. And so many of the good locations for cities have probably or even taken, have all of them been taken? Probably not. History is weird and people make decisions based on, sort of, contextual circumstances that might have left some potential city locations just untouched because of this weird set of historical events. So this is something that I'm certainly interested in exploring more. It's a project that I would like to undertake. It's basically hire some people, and identify 50 potential locations for charter cities. Just like lookout where trade is happening, where urbanization is happening, where it is possible to acquire large chunks of land and identify basically 50 of these potential charter city locations to see, okay is the land available? Is it good? How easy is it to acquire? To answer questions like that, if any of your listeners are interested in helping out, with some donations, we can actually start getting this sort of concrete answer to that question.TL: For the audience, I’m going to put up links to the reference guides from the Charter Cities Institute on the website and every other available resource. You wrote an article recently about America's foreign policy and how charter city can play a role in its geopolitical competition with China, specifically the belt and road initiative. Do you care to expatiate on that point?ML: Sure, so I think if we look at, um... the US in some way still has a positive image even with the recent sort of killing/murder of George Floyd. We saw a global outcry of that because I think people rightly hold America to a higher standard versus the outcry that we saw of the sort of Uighur, basically, a genocide in China where people have kind of ignored that because I guess they expected [the] Chinese to do it to a certain extent. But American engagement with the rest of the world has, I think, left a little something to be desired over the last 40 years. Iraq was a disaster, Afghanistan is a disaster, Libya is a disaster, so I think there's a need for rethinking American engagement. Combined with the fact that China is pretty aggressively now pursuing their image on the global stage in terms of building infrastructure with belt and road, in terms of wooing foreign politicians, foreign leaders, to get them to be China's friend. So my article was aimed at… particularly people in the, for example, the Development Finance Corporation in The United States to hopefully get them to see charter cities as a potential way to offer a positive influence on the world. And while specifically, I think what American engagement could look like is having Americans who can help with governance, having Americans who can provide financing options if you use American contractors to help build the city, to help develop governance norms, to basically provide the supporting infrastructure for charter cities which I think are important because right now when developing countries are looking around the world, they think 'okay, what policies do we adopt? Who do we want to be like?' All of them are thinking like let's be like China. China has had tremendous economic growth over the last 40 years. They've lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty which is a great thing. Unfortunately, at the same time that's been coupled with a sort of lack of respect of human rights, with no democracy, with no freedom of speech, these things that are inimical to human flourishing, and they think because America has developed so long ago, the possibility of following a similar pattern to America's development is just outside of people's minds. And so I think what charter cities can hopefully help demonstrate is this sort of we call them American values, but I think they are universal values of things like freedom of toleration of markets really can work for everybody and can provide an alternative development model to the one that China is currently claiming. TL: Sticking with the US, I know you write about it, others write about it, are the institutional (I want to say rot. I don't know maybe that's the right word), you know, are they as bad as some analysts say it is, especially in the light of COVID-19?ML: Yeah, I think it rot is probably an appropriate word. We basically have coasted the last kind of 40 years off of existing institutions. We haven't really been challenged. We haven't updated any of our systems. Everybody is complacent. If you think about it, part of the reason is that nobody has actually helped build an institution in the US. Rather, the most dynamic part of the economy is Silicon Valley because there are people there who are building new things. So people are required, to a certain extent, to have this like very broad set of managerial competencies that you don't need to have if you grow up... and I'm not just saying in government, in government you just develop these very specific set of skills, but also in a lot of large private corporations. How many new national banks have been invested in the last 30, 40 years? And so because of that, you grow up learning a very specific set of competencies which is OK in terms of like keeping the system going, but it means that anytime you're presented with an external shock, you just don't know how to react. And COVID was that shock, which I think exposed a lot of the existing inadequacies in the American system that people were unsure of, like unable to think outside the box. Our bureaucrats were quite skilled at figuring out how to pass the buck, how to not take responsibility for things. But they had no idea how to actually take responsibility and then how to actually enact change that will be beneficial. And we're seeing that continue today, you still can't buy N95 masks on Amazon, it's 3 months after the fact. This is a very solvable problem but our institutions are fundamentally broken and I think you can add that to the growing culture war where you have red states where a lot of people are refusing to wear masks because it's not a pandemic, it's a dempanic, this is a fake disease, really idiotic stuff like that. And then in blue states, you're seeing some of the elite institutions basically begin to eat themselves. The New York Times has basically been taken over by Social Justice Warriors staffers who sort of opposed an op-ed by Tom Cotton, the senator from, I think, Arkansas. And I didn't like that op-ed, it was a bad op-ed but he's a senator for goodness sakes. I mean, if you are the paper of record you should allow senators to publish sometimes even if you don't like their arguments. And so we're seeing this, sort of, I think deeply dysfunctional institutions combined with this deeply dysfunctional culture that will probably take decades or generation to really sort themselves out. There isn't a lot of sort of, I don't know, capacity left at the seams. Even the late 60s, '68 when we saw a similar social unrest, there was something solid. There was a core underneath and I think that core it's quite atrophied. I'm a little bit nervous about the future of the US. TL: And I mean it's interesting to me that you talked about Silicon Valley because, at least, from an outsider's perspective here, it amazes me how little political influence Silicon Valley has. LaughsAnd I have one analogy and I think I tweeted this though I got a lot of pushback here and there that I don't think, and I may be wrong about this... I don't think that the Koch Brothers, for example, would have struggled to build more housing in Silicon Valley. And we have people that are vastly richer than the Koch brothers in the Valley. I mean, what is going on? Why do they have so little political influence? They get railroaded even by the local government. ML: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good question. One of my friends likes to joke that Silicon Valley thinks they're above politics, but in fact, they are below it. You've seen, I think, Apple pledged 2.5 billion dollars to affordable housing in the Bay Area. Microsoft, I think a billion to affordable housing in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg, I think, 500 million to affordable housing in the Bay Area. And like the problem is just that, okay, if you're spending half a billion dollars to put it crassly. Like just buy off the entire City Council and just tell them to legalise housing. And I think it's a sort of combination of historical circumstances. One is that because most of Silicon Valley is in the world of bits and not in atoms, they just haven't interacted with the government that much. So because of that, there was no need to really figure out how to work with government, it was like you ignore us, we ignore you. To use this sort of Chinese proverb - the emperor is far away, I'm on the other side of the country, and so they didn't really interact with the government that much, and because of that just saw it as kind of part of the ecosystem, not something that to pay attention to. I believe that is changing now.I think Mark Zuckerberg's congressional hearing like a year ago was a wake-up call where the congressmen were asking Mark Zuckerberg, how do you turn on the iPhone? And it's like, OK, well, when you have the political leaders who are that disconnected with what is actually going on, there is a serious challenge. That being said, it will take a number of years for Silicon Valley to actually figure or politics out. There is, I think, several challenges involved in that. One, I think Silicon Valley has a bias towards nonprofits, they figure if something is a good idea, you should be able to make money off it. But nonprofits are a kind of integral parts of influencing government. Second is Silicon Valley likes things that scale. Government necessarily doesn't really scale. At least it doesn't scale in the same manner that a technology startup does and so because of that you have to put all of these resources in, to help mobilize people, to help create a network, to help influence things and you're unable to tell whether it's actually working for a long period of time. So the technology startup, right, okay, you work for a year, you get product-market fit. After product-market fit, you grow at 10 per cent month over month for a period of like three years or something. So if you're growing 10 per cent month over month, you can see it's working, you can see something is happening. While with politics, you might pay activists on the ground, you might pay lobbyists, but it might take years before you actually see legislation that's even proposed, much less implemented. And most of Silicon Valley just doesn't really operate on those...they're not used to those time horizons and so they're unwilling to sort of put the resources necessary to actually engage them. Now I think a third reason is that Silicon Valley is very, I don't know...it has a very universal mindset. So New York, if you look at New York, all the high net worth people in New York, When they donate to charity, they typically donate to New York charities. So they donate to the Met, they donate to Central Park. They get status by paying for things in New York City, so you have all of these goods supported by basically the billionaire class in New York. In San Francisco, people get status by doing universal things. So the effect of altruist movement, for example, is quite popular in San Francisco. But these universal things, while I think they have a great impact on humanity because you don't get status by helping to improve housing in the city, there just isn't as much focus on the city itself, it's a little bit neglected and so there hasn't been this (the) same mobilization of Silicon Valley elite to coordinate to help fix the city as with New York where the elite do spend a lot more money on improving the city's quality of life. TL: That's interesting. I hope they wake up and they get it right.ML: Me too.TL: Final question, Mark. Ten years from now, if you're looking back at all these things you're working on, particularly charter cities, what do you hope to have achieved? ML: Yeah, in ten years I figure we probably [indistinct words] three dozens or so charter cities that are either up and running or are like in advanced planning stages. In ten years, probably a few million people living in charter cities and with the potential population to reach 10s of millions. I want charter cities to be sort of understood and discussed at every world forum, like the World Economic Forum. All these, like, sort of highfalutin events. I want them to be part of the language, like right now, for example, if we think about International Development there are some themes that come up all the time. I think gender equality and global warming kind of pervade every discussion, as well as randomized control trials, they all pervade every discussion about development, I want to charter cities to help pervade those discussions and not just pervade those discussions but actually be improving people's lives on the ground. TL. Yeah. That's a goal I can get behind. Thank you very much, Mark, and I wish you all the best. ML: Thank you for having me. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe
We interview Kurtis Lockhart, Head of Research at the Charter Cities Institute and PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Oxford. We discuss Charter Cities in Zambia and Nigeria, International Relations, Geopolitics, China and Hong Kong, UBI, Infrastructure, Migration, Human Rights, Intra-African Trade, Education, Urbanisation, Free Trade, Regional Integration, and Culture. You can find us @secretbunkerpod on IG and Twitter, The Secret Bunker Podcast on Youtube, Reddit, and all podcast hosts. Reach out to us at any of these and thesecretbunkerpodcast@gmail.com as well as leaving audio messages on secretbunkerpodcast.com, which will be live answered on a future episode! Music: Reach The Top by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/secretbunker/message
For our first full episode of the Charter Cities Podcast, Mark is joined by Gyude Moore to discuss his experiences in and the history of Liberia, and what this story can teach us about charter cities in Africa and emerging markets. Gyude takes a brief look at the defining moments in Liberian history for this discussion, mentioning the population that arrived from America in the 1800s and the civil war he was born into at the end of the 20th century. We hear more from his personal story of moving to the US for college and then returning to a governmental position thanks to the Scott Family Fellows program and how this turned into a role as the Minister of Public Works. Gyude comments on the characteristics of the Liberian government at this time and the systems and attitudes that halted progress and reduced funds. From there, we move into Gyude's main passion and argument, that paved roads make up the backbone of any economy, a technology that has become completely commonplace in most of the Western world and the dearth of which results in much of Africa's economic stagnation. Gyude makes the connection between the US' reliance on the road network for so much of their strong economy and then compares this with Africa's road infrastructure, concluding that Africa can never progress without better, paved access between cities and hubs. The later part of our conversation moves into a discussion on Chinese involvement in Africa, the Belt and Roads Initiative and how Charter Cities might aid the propulsion of African economies in a way that other means might not. Gyude is a passionate and experienced planning mind, with lots to share from his native Liberia and beyond, so tune in to get it all! Key Points From This Episode: • The influence of the end of the American slave trade on Liberian history and culture. • Gyude's early years, growing up during the Liberian civil war. • Comparing the encroaching civil war in Liberia to the current spread of the coronavirus. • The influx of people into Monrovia at that time and the strain it placed on infrastructure. • Gyude's move to the US for college and landing in Baltimore to an unexpected reception. • Heading home to Liberia and the program that recruited Gyude to work with the state. • The period in which Gyude took up a position as Minister of Public Works. • Entrepreneurial spirit in government; aspirational work in the public sector in Liberia. • Gyude's experiences of corruption in Liberia's emerging market. • Cultural and mindset shifts for better long term benefits and installing systems in chaos. • The technology of paved roads and what it enables a government and population to achieve. • Gyude's idea for the incentivized development of cheaper materials for paved roads. • Enforcing accountability for government projects, initiatives and funds. • Gyude's critique of the Belt and Road Initiative and estimates of necessary funds. • Assessing the involvement of China in Africa and the debt that is already present. • The importance of planned cities in the lives of citizens and economic growth. • Looking to the example of Asia and what Africa can and cannot learn from their model. • The core of what appeals to Gyude about charter cities and how they can help. • Risks that accompany the charter city model and the power of the host country. • Skill sharing for the benefit of a local population; the rise in Africans hired by China. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: https://twitter.com/gyude_moore (Gyude Moore on Twitter) https://www.chartercitiesinstitute.org/ (Charter Cities Institute)... Support this podcast
We are so happy to welcome you to the Charter Cities Podcast, where we highlight the different facets of building a charter city. Through this platform, we hope that listeners will not only gain a deep understanding of charter cities from urban planning to politics and finance but also the necessary steps that it takes to build them. In this episode, we do things a bit differently, with Mark Lutter, founder of Charter Cities Institute, and host of the podcast getting put in the hot seat. His CCI colleague, Tamara Winter, interviews him on a range of topics, both directly and not so directly, related to charter cities. We learn more about the mission of CCI and why Mark believes that charter cities are a good model for economic development. While Paul Romer, famed economist, unsuccessfully tried to get charter cities off the ground, Mark explains why he believes CCI's approach will ultimately be more successful. Mark also sheds light on how charter cities are complementary to but different from economic zones. While these delineated areas are often politically motivated, the vision behind the charter city is much broader than that. CCI hopes to contribute to aspects such as site selection, urban planning, and governance, and in doing so, take a holistic approach to building a new city. Mark also discusses what it takes to build governance capacity, some of the charter city constraints, and how partnerships helped him launch CCI. We learn more about Mark as well, from some of his favorite books, the African cuisine that's made the biggest impression on him, and how he has carried the lessons from his federal bureaucratic parents with him. We couldn't have hoped for a better first episode, and we hope you join us for the journey to come. Tune in today! Key Points From This Episode: • The two ways that CCI's attempt at creating charter cities is different from Paul Romer's. • Why Mark is skeptical about using services as a means of building charter cities. • Find out how charter cities are similar to and different from special economic zones. • How regulatory arbitrage can produce favorable outcomes and what CCI is doing about it. • Charter cities need good urban planning and infrastructure in conjunction with good governance. • Two of Mark's favorite books that he's read related to places he has been. • How growing up with parents who worked in federal bureaucracy has shaped Mark. • What industrial policy is and what charter cities should be cognizant of when pursuing it. • Why, despite admiring China's Belt and Road Initiative, Mark is cautious about it. • An overview of Honduras' charter legislation and what went wrong in execution. • Find out what it would take to build a government from scratch and successful examples. • Which historical leaders would have been good charter city founders? • Learn more about the constraints that charter cities face and how they're likely to change. • Why Mark would opt to build charter cities in Canada rather than the US. • Mark's motivation for founding CCI and his proudest CCI achievements thus far. • Find out about the two key partnerships that helped Mark launch CCI. • Why the state shouldn't be trusted with industrial policy. • What Silicon Valley is not understanding about politics and how they can change it. • Mark's favorite non-charter city books and what we can learn from historical eras. • An overview of the Hanseatic League and how it can be used as a governance model today. • How Mark's thinking about charter cities has changed since founding CCI and how listeners can get involved. Links Mentioned Support this podcast
Mark Lutter is the Founder of Charter Cities Institute. The Charter Cities Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to advancing human flourishing by building the ecosystem for charter cities worldwide. Brought to you by Haberland Group (HaberlandGroup.com) and Hardy Haberland's Programs (HardyHaberland.com). This podcast is brought to you by Haberland Group. Haberland Group is a global provider of marketing solutions. With multidisciplinary teams in major world markets, our holding companies specialize in advertising, branding, communications planning, digital marketing, media, podcasting, public relations, as well as specialty marketing. If you are looking for a world-class partner to work on marketing programs, go to HaberlandGroup.com and contact us. This podcast is also brought to you by Hardy Haberland's Programs. Hardy provides educational programs for high performers who want world-class achievement, true fulfillment, and lasting transformation in their lives. He also provides consulting for established brands and businesses that have generated a minimum of $3 million in annual sales. If you need a catalyst for transformation and a strategist for success at the highest level, go to HardyHaberland.com and apply. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts/iTunes. It takes less than 60 seconds and it really makes a difference. Rate, review, and subscribe at HardyHaberland.com/iTunes.
Mark Lutter is the Founder of Charter Cities Institute. The Charter Cities Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to advancing human flourishing by building the ecosystem for charter cities worldwide. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts/iTunes. It takes less than 60 seconds and it really makes a difference. Rate, review, and subscribe at HardyHaberland.com/iTunes.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
