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.
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Mexico City sits on doubly challenging terrain: First, it is situated on top of a dried lake and is sinking by several centimeters each year. Second, it is in earthquake-prone territory with the North American plate pushing against the Pacific plate here. Surprisingly, there is a lot of verticality in the city. And as the city famously chokes on brutal traffic, there are plans to build even higher into the sky, and deeper into the ground.
Mexico City – May 2014
The Guardian’s Jason Farago has written a beautiful long-form piece about Ground Zero thirteen years after the terrorist attack of 9/11. The struggle to rebuild this part of town is emblematic of the New York of the 21st century.
Model of WTC site as seen in Skyscraper Museum
My dad pointed me to John Maersheimer’s piece in the current Foreign Affairs issue. “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault” is a fairly comprehensive representation of a realist IR perspective of the current conflict.
Tanks in Kiev, 2009
A quick update on our work on the Yangon guide: our Facebook page is nearing 6,000 followers and we had an interview up with the Myanmar Times. Work on the manuscript is progressing. A few of the recent posts after the jump. You can see those and more also on our Tumblr page.
Cross-posted from the GFI blog: I am back from a month traveling in India, visiting Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. It was an opportune moment to assess the first 100 days of the new BJP government under prime minister Modi.
The Secretariat’s South Block in Delhi
Our interview with the Myanmar Times came out a few days ago: On a research assignment in 2013, Ben Bansal, a writer and graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, arrived in Myanmar for the first time. “It was unlike any place I had been before, yet somehow familiar at the same time,” he wrote by email recently.
Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise building (1908)
This building caught my attention when having friends over and going to the adjacent playground in Central Park. The roof is fenced off and the windows are boarded up. What could be a prime piece of real estate is instead the “Prison on the Park”.
Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex is the administrative heart of the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. Le Corbusier designed the main buildings of Sector 1 himself. We took a tour a few weeks ago.
The Assembly seen from the water ponds on the eastern side
We did a pitstop in Chandigarh last week to look at what is touted to be the most successful planned city of the second half of the twentieth century. Here, Le Corbusier and others had the tabula rasa situation they so craved to realise their utopian vision of urban life.
One building caught my eye while walking through Bangalore. It is the tall tower of the Visvesvaraya Centre complex by Charles Correa. Unbeknownst to me at the time, its equally interesting yet shorter sibling lies to the north along Amebdkar Road.
