This is where I think in public — about urbanism, political economy, and often just the view from wherever I happen to be standing. New here? The reading guides below are the best way in. Otherwise, scroll down for the latest blog posts.
Latest posts
Here’s an overview of the classes I taught at TUJ a few years ago. They ranged from development economics to urban studies. Temple University Japan is the Japan campus of Philadelphia based Temple University. They have been around since the 1980s, and have grown significantly in the last couple of years, in line with the global appeal of Japan (and its undervalued exchange rate).
Continue readingI came to Tokyo for the first time in 2012. Little did I know back then that this initial trip was to spark an intellectual love story when I later made the capital the locus of my PhD research. I explored Tokyo primarily by foot and bike, and while scaling the quiet backstreets and busy station plazas, I pondered the vivid economic history the city had seen in the postwar era. My doctorate was situating the Japanese economic miracle within Tokyo’s unique urban space, honing in on its small competitive factories and its egalitarian living standards spread–out over a gargantuan mass of low-rise and high-density housing. There are several books that accompanied me on this journey. I put some of them into this Tokyo thread, with a few others to be found on the shelves.
Continue readingAustralia is currently gripped by a debate about whether to institute a gas export tax (some say 25%) to cash in on high commodity prices and excessive profits in the industry. It’s a good occasion to look more closely at the fiscal arrangements governing the gas industry down under.
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With our time in Australia running out, we went on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Uluru in the heart of Central Australia. One of the sacred sites of First Nations Australia, the place’s aura is hard to express in words. Some observations after the jump.
Continue readingAs urban problems abound, so do radical solutions. This thread shows some selected books of writers who have been guiding stars in my analysis of urban space over the past ten or so years, and some which I still want to read and interrogate more closely.
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I just learned from the inimitable Zoe Ward on LinkedIn that the redevelopment of the Nakano Sunplaza has been scrapped. We lived a few hundred meters down the road in postgraduate student accommodation during our first 2.5 years in Tokyo exactly 10 years ago (which is when I took the photos in this post).
Continue readingOne of the threads of the planned bookshop is called Urban India. I mentioned some of the books I want to feature when I wrote about a course I taught at Temple University Japan. They are: Rana Dasgupta’s “Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi”, Siddharta Deb’s “The Beautiful and the Damned”, Kushanava Choudhury’s, “Epic City” and William Dalrymple’s, “City of Djinns”.
The main criteria of including the books back then was accessibility via Western publishers, significantly limiting the field of potential titles. Alas, much of that restriction remains. Nonetheless, the lack of women writers in my original post is striking, and my shop’s thread must contain some of these underrepresented voices. I also regard these threads as fluid containers for the books. If I sell a book from within, I might replace it with a fresh copy, or with a different book altogether.
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There is a lot of coverage on Dubai and the United Arab Emirates these days given the Iran War. Although I am trying to moderate my news intake, I read Janan Ganesh’s “We’ll always have Dubai” and Richard Florida’s “Could this be end of Dubai?” and have some thoughts after the jump.
Continue readingGlebe Island, the no-man’s land between Balmain, Rozelle, Glebe and Pyrmont is officially slated for redevelopment. The NSW government made an announcement last week and I thought I’d have a look at it to understand how our chosen home in Sydney will transform over the coming years once we’re long gone from here.
With a move to a new but yet undisclosed location coming up later this year, I am entertaining options for my next life chapter. Looking back at my intellectual and professional journey over the past two decades, and taking into account the state of the world today, I concluded that I want to start something of my own. Could a bookshop be the answer?
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