If you’re a regular listener of this podcast you may be familiar with the term Special Economic Zone (SEZ). In short, SEZ refers to an area where business and trade laws are different from the rest of the country. Typically, these zones will have laws or legal codes and regulations that make it attractive for businesses to relocate there. Today on the show you’ll learn all about these zones and more as we sit down with Joseph McKinney, CEO of the Catawba Digital Economic Zone (DEZ), a new SEZ es...
Aug 01, 2022•34 min•Ep. 50
Stefan Dercon is the author of Gambling on Development, in which he details his theory of the elite bargain framework for development in low-income countries. Stefan is a Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, and also serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies. Prior to his current academic posts, he has extensive experience in the world of policy, as the Chief Economist at the Department for International Development and as an advisor to the UK’s...
Jul 18, 2022•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 49
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 s...
Jun 27, 2022•59 min•Ep. 48
Dr. Jared Rubin is the co-author of How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth, which he wrote with Mark Koyama, a previous guest on the podcast. We are so happy to welcome Jared to the show today to discuss the thesis of his book, and what he and Mark aimed to add to the literature on the subject of economic growth in the contemporary context. This is a fascinating and thoughtful conversation, packed with insight and nuance on important arguments of the past, what is n...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 47
China’s presence in Africa is widely speculated upon (and wildly misunderstood). Joining us today to speak to the truth of the matter is Sinologist-Africanist Professor of International Development at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Deborah Brautigam. Deborah is also the Director of the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) and author of Will Africa Feed China? and, more famously, The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa . In this episode, she sha...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 46
Dr. Linda Colley is a leading expert on British imperial and global history, among other topics in British history. Dr. Colley is the M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University, here today to discuss her newly published book, The Gun, The Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World , which explores the complex interrelationship between the rise of modern warfare and the rise of modern constitutionalism worldwide. After introducing Dr. Colley, an...
May 09, 2022•49 min•Ep. 45
Today’s episode is a bonus episode, where we take a deep dive into the Italian Renaissance (with a focus on Venice) with world-renowned expert, Professor Corey Tazzara. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the formation of independent city-states, to the financial and political ramifications of the crusades, to the rise and fall of Venice as an economic powerhouse, this conversation has it all! We start at the beginning, with a comment on the role of the Middle Ages in the formation of society a...
May 02, 2022•2 hr 22 min
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 le...
Apr 19, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 44
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 nutritio...
Apr 11, 2022•30 min
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 ...
Apr 11, 2022•50 min
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 effe...
Apr 04, 2022•34 min•Ep. 43
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 Reli...
Feb 07, 2022•42 min•Ep. 42
Joining us in conversation today is Scott Beyer, the Founder and CEO of the Market Urbanism Report, a media company dedicated to advancing the free market’s classically liberal approach to urban issues. Tune in to hear Scott’s definition of market urbanism and how it relates to the traditional free market. He describes how his audience varies drastically from a partisan and ideological perspective and tells us why this happens, before highlighting cities across the world that embody aspects of h...
Nov 29, 2021•51 min•Ep. 41
Today’s guest is Ed Glaeser, a Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and he joins us to talk about urbanization and urban planning. Ed has written, or co-authored several books, including The Triumph of The City , and more recently, Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation , published this year with David Cutler. Our conversation begins on the subject of the rapid urbanization of parts of the developing world such as India and Sub-Saharan Africa. We explore what l...
Nov 08, 2021•55 min•Ep. 40
“The North American development pattern, the way we build our cities, creates a lot of liabilities and not enough wealth, financially, to actually take care of those liabilities.” These are the words of today’s guest Charles “Chuck” Marohn. Chuck is the founder and president of Strong Towns, as well as a professional engineer and land use planner with decades of experience. He is also the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity and Confessions of a Recoverin...
Oct 25, 2021•53 min•Ep. 39
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 ar...
Oct 11, 2021•46 min•Ep. 38
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 ...
Sep 27, 2021•51 min•Ep. 37
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 off...
Sep 13, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 36
Today’s guest is Dror Poleg, an economic historian who explores how physical and digital systems affect human behavior, well-being, and dignity. Dror joins us on the show to talk about how technology is undermining the basic foundations of real estate’s value and how this is scrambling a lot of what we know about buildings as well as cities. Dror’s thesis is that because of the way technology has enabled remote work and access, people no longer make their choices about where to live for reasons ...
Aug 23, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 35
As we step into a new decade, it’s a good time to reflect on our expectations for the next 10 years. There are a wide variety of possible futures, some of them more plausible than others, but how do we shape a preferable future? Today’s guest believes that technological advancements could result in what he calls the ‘Roaring 20s’, with a productivity and economic boom that extends well beyond the expected post-pandemic rebound. Eli Dourado is an economist and regulatory hacker living in Washingt...
Aug 09, 2021•53 min•Ep. 34
The complex history of democracy and its global origins isn’t taught in school. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to self-educate. On today’s episode, we speak with David Stasavage, a Professor of Political Science and Dean of Social Sciences at the University of New York. He allows us to dip into his incredible wealth of knowledge around the history of this form of governance, as well as giving us his insights and predictions for its future. You’ll hear about the role of technology and geogr...
Jul 26, 2021•46 min•Ep. 33
There has never been an immortal society. No matter how technologically advanced our own society is, it is unlikely to be an exception. In order to achieve a positive future that defies these odds, it is critical that we understand the hidden forces that shape society. To help us do that is today’s guest, Samo Burja, a sociologist and the Founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the political and institutional landscape of society. Samo is a Research Fellow at the Long N...
Jul 12, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 32
Today’s guest is Feyi Fawehinmi, author of Formation: The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation . Feyi joins us on the show to talk about the period of history in Nigeria that his book covers and we kick things of hearing our guest talk about his reasons for writing the book. After the Civil War in Nigeria, there was a cultural prohibition on developing a sense of history because of the risk of upsetting an unstable political equilibrium. This combined with a very demographically young co...
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 31
Refugees bring skills, talents, and aspirations and can be a benefit rather than a burden to receiving societies. Realizing this potential relies on moving beyond a purely humanitarian focus to fully include refugees in host-country economies, build economic opportunities in refugee-hosting regions, and navigate the ambiguous politics of refugee protection. In today’s episode of the Charter Cities Podcast, Kurtis Lockhart speaks with Alexander Betts, a Professor of Forced Migration and Internati...
Jun 14, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 30
Our guest today is Joachim Rücker, who currently serves as a key partner in the Sustainable Development Zone Alliance. Preceded by a varied and fascinating career, Joachim served as a special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Kosovo for the duration of its transition to independence and was responsible for its economic reconstruction. He was also the Mayor of a German Industrial City, called Sindelfingen for almost ten years, and has been stationed abroad on numerous occ...
May 24, 2021•42 min•Ep. 29
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 a...
May 10, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 28
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...
May 03, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 27
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-Dol...
Apr 12, 2021•56 min•Ep. 26
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 Chin...
Mar 29, 2021•59 min•Ep. 25
Much talk around climate change focuses on mitigation, with far less attention paid to adaptation strategies. Matthew E. Khan, an Economics Professor at Johns Hopkins and Director of the 21st Centuries Cities Initiative, is a climate change adaptation optimist. His research focuses on urban and environmental economics. At the start of the year, he released two books, Unlocking The Potential of Post-Industrial Cities and Adapting to Climate Change . In this episode, Kurtis Lockhart sits down with...
Mar 15, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 24
