Contributor(s): Professor Mats Berdal | How can the UN’s mission to raise humanitarian standards find its way in a world dominated by security concerns and power competition? Mats Berdal is Professor of Security and Development at King’s College, London. The International Relations Department (@LSEIRDept) is now in its 87th year, making it one of the oldest ... Show More
Dec 2014
Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space
Contributor(s): Professor Keller Easterling, Dr David Madden | Infrastructure is not only the underground pipes and cables controlling our cities. It also determines the hidden rules that structure the spaces all around us – free trade zones, smart cities, suburbs, and shopping m ... Show More
1h 28m
Dec 2014
Local Governance in Times of CrisisLessons for Greece from the City of Thessaloniki
Contributor(s): Yiannis Boutaris | Amidst the economic crisis in Greece, something unusual emerged in Thessaloniki, the idiosyncratic “co-Capital” of the country. Under the mayorship of Yiannis Boutaris, the first non-political figure to be elected as Mayor in the city’s modern h ... Show More
1h 21m
Dec 2014
Papal Infallibility? Global poverty, and the mystery of global inequality
Contributor(s): Professor Angus Deaton | In lectures across three consecutive evenings (9 December, 10 December and 11 December) leading development economist Professor Deaton will discuss his work on health and poverty. Global poverty has been falling rapidly, even as income ine ... Show More
1h 22m
Apr 2023
Why smart infrastructure is a smart investment—for both Democrats and Republicans—in an era of historic public works spending
As the U.S. prepares to spend hundreds of billions on new projects, HKS Professor Stephen Goldsmith says successfully upgrading our infrastructure will not only require spending all that money smartly, but spending it on infrastructure that is itself smart—full of sensors that ca ... Show More
36m 34s
Oct 2023
The Big Dig
Over its more than 40 year journey from conception to completion, Boston’s Big Dig massive infrastructure project, which rerouted the central highway in the heart of the city, encountered every hurdle imaginable: ruthless politics, engineering challenges, secretive contractors, o ... Show More
55m 26s
Sep 2022
How is your city tackling the climate crisis? | Marvin Rees
"If we can unlock the full potential of our cities, we can minimize the price the planet pays for hosting us in our growing numbers," says Marvin Rees, the Mayor of Bristol, UK. Rees notes that while sustainable infrastructure already exists in many parts of the world -- like ele ... Show More
20m 9s
Aug 2023
Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World
America's once-vibrant small-to-midsize cities--Syracuse, Worcester, Akron, Flint, Rockford, and others--increasingly resemble urban wastelands. Gutted by deindustrialization, outsourcing, and middle-class flight, disproportionately devastated by metro freeway systems that laid w ... Show More
12m 43s
Oct 2023
Politics in the Crevices (S. 13, Ep. 8)
On this week's episode of the podcast, Sarah El Kazaz of SOAS, University of London, joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Politics in the Crevices: Urban Design and the Making of Property Markets in Cairo and Istanbul. In this transnational ethnography of neighborhoods under ... Show More
44m 29s
Nov 2022
Building Infrastructure for Offshore Wind Power
An electrical grid reliant on renewable power will require building new transmission, distribution, and storage capability, often in places that have layers of existing infrastructure. Nabil Hitti, the vice president of U.S. Offshore Wind for National Grid Ventures, talks about t ... Show More
19m 6s
Oct 2023
Babbage: Deb Chachra on the value of great infrastructure
From roads to telecommunications, networks of infrastructure define people’s lives, but are often hidden from view. Our guest wants people to step back, look at and appreciate the infrastructure around them. As the climate changes and landscapes shift, societies need to prepare f ... Show More
38m 15s