Media interviews

Round of recent media  interviews: including radio interview of congestion pricing and its impacts on cities; interview about tension between China and USA in South China Sea with the arrival of USS Carl Vinson in Danang, Vietnam and an NBC Think video interview on impacts of hosting the Olympic Games.

Informal economy and street vendors in Cali, Colombia

New article just published on informal economy in Cali Colombia. Based on survey of street vendors in the downtown area. It was cowritten with colleagues at the urban observatory POLIS  at ICESI University,  Dr.  Lina Martinez and Daniela Estrada.

You can access it for free  here

Abstract

The informal economy is an important part of urban economies in the global South. Almost half of Colombia's working population relies on the informal economy to obtain income. This study examined street vendors in downtown Cali, Colombia. A recent survey of 527 street vendors provides the basis for a detailed analysis of who works as street vendors, how much they earn, aspirations and perceptions of their work, and how closely they resemble the rest of the working population. The presented data also show the links between this sector and the formal economy. Connections between people working in this sector and the State were also examined, and welfare payment flows from the State to the sector were revealed. This study shows how the informal sector is closely tied to the formal economy and the State's welfare functions.

Keywords

Informal economy; Street vendors; Formal economy; Cali; Colombia

Street vendors in Cali Colombia (©John Rennie Short)

Problems of US urban public transport

Why is urban public transport in the US so bad? Really bad. My recently published article shows how  and why this infrastructure is in such bad shape. And what may turn it around.

DC Metro (Photo ©John Rennie Short)

Urban productivity is key to economic growth

Want the economy to grow? In a recent article I argue that making cities more efficient is a key to stimulating growth and achieving greater social justice. You can access it here. It is published in The Conversation.

Traffic jams reduce productivity: Bangkok, Thailand (Photo: © John Rennie Short)

Flash and Intimate Urbanism

There are two types of urbanism. There is flash urbanism; this is city as urban spectacular, building as starchitecture, the big statement, the grand flourish. For the past hundred years the persistent theme of flash urbanism is the construction of the tall building. Cities predicated upon flash urbanism include the oil rich states of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Here a combination of lots of money and a desperate need for world respect and global recognition leads to an architectural frenzy. Abu Dhabi has a Zaha Hadid-designed performing arts center and a Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum. Its central business district is a concrete forest of new tall buildings. Currently Dubai boasts the world’s tallest building, the 160-floor Burj Khalifa and the 77-floor Emirates Park Tower, the tallest hotel in the world. Tall buildings are spectacular and as urban skyline they create a visual signature of a globalizing modernity. In China the construction of Pudong in Shanghai was the self-conscious attempt to create an urban fabric of tall buildings including Shanghai Tower, the tallest tower in Asia.


Shanghai, China

But what is life like at the bottom of these buildings? In the Arab Emirates, streets are rarely filled with people. Almost a quarter of a million laborers work to construct Dubai's urban fantasy of global city rather than a city of enriched human experience. In Pudong the buildings that stand so tall rarely link with each other or the surrounding urban fabric. Too close to drive, the locals complain, and too far to walk from each other. Flash urbanism is about surface appearance, about impressing, about visual rhetoric. It is about the now.

There is another, quieter form of urbanism that I will refer to as a more intimate urbanism, smaller scale, more linked to the human body and its locomotion. An exemplar is the urban fabric of Dutch cities in their walkability, there deference to the bicyclists, the reliance on public transport, their quieter, more intimate feel. The Dutch prize what translates as coziness, and this is obvious in their built form. The Netherlands is not known for tall impressive buildings as in Abu Dhabi, Dubai or Shanghai. They are better known for the intimacy of the their streets, the coziness of their public space, the human scale of their cities.

Delft, Netherlands





Flash urbanism and intimate urbanism. They are not so much separate but two poles of a continuum. Sometime the flash can turn with age and use and custom into the intimate as a city incorporates the brash and new into the old and familiar. The Town Hall in Amsterdam, a monument to civic pride and civic society, was at one time one of the largest municipal buildings in Europe. Now it is a much-loved landmark in Dam Square. Flash urbanism reflects the ‘make-an-impression-now’: it is the architectural equivalent of instant gratification. It took less than twenty years to turn rice paddies into Pudong's skyline. Intimate urbanism takes a while to develop. Dutch urbanism emerged over centuries. While it is easy and quick to follow fashion it takes longer to find out what works as livable city. I like to visit flash cities but I prefer to live in more intimate cities.

(All Photos © John Rennie Short)