00:00:00: This

00:00:13: is the Urban Political.

00:00:23: Hi, Nitin.

00:00:29: Thank you

00:00:33: so much for having me today.

00:00:36: So in the last episode we had a lively conversation on urban political economies and geopolitical world-making with Yong Zhang, Serma Altun & Vojci Kiblovski.

00:00:48: Among other things our speakers explored alternative forms of world making amidst geopolitical competition that is shaping urbanization in cities and regions across the world.

00:00:58: In today's episode will be unpacking yet another part of this puzzle that is how to think of cities and urbanization at the current geopolitical congenital.

00:01:08: Aside from material and ecological implications, they produce transformations in everyday life as well – in how these transformations are experienced, negotiated or contested by urban residents.

00:01:23: In today's episode we will explore how infrastructure governance and inequality intersect in shaping daily lives and how they shape everyday geopolitics.

00:01:34: To explore this topic in further detail, Leigh Annay are joined by three scholars whose research focuses on the subject.

00:01:42: our first guest Joana Kotsis.

00:01:45: um Joanna is a community engaged scholar who's work examines contemporary transformations of urban space that result from economic and social restructuring of communities impoverished by globalization.

00:01:58: she experiments with affect, focus and arts-based methods to explore how creative practice can be used in research policymaking and civil society organizing to build socially just and sustainable cities.

00:02:12: Our theory building work on affect and planning connects the ontological principles of anti oppressive post structuralist feminist and decolonial perspectives space for knowledge creation by historically excluded communities to advance social justice and sustainable projects.

00:02:34: Our second guest, Sara Smith is a professor of Geography & Environment at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

00:02:43: She's an anti-colonial feminist political geographer interested in relationships between territory time and embodied life.

00:02:51: A research seeks to understand how politics and geopolitics are constituted through intimate acts of love, friendship and birth.

00:03:00: And how the politics of time shape our.

00:03:03: we theorize the past in future.

00:03:05: a work in Ladakh India has previously been on marriage & family planning with Amabil Gargana A project on how ladaki college students think about themselves belonging to the future.

00:03:21: She also pursues these issues as they emerge global context.

00:03:27: Through writing on US politics, demography and theorizations of climate change, Saira is a co-founder of the Desirable Futures Collective The Flock Collective And with Daniel Purifoy, the land back abolition project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A collaborative venture in which he studies her own institution and how it builds an archive for just future.

00:03:55: incoming president for the American Association of Geographers and she's the author of Intimate to your Politics, Love Marriage & Territory And Future on India's Northern Threshold and Political Geography A Critical Introduction.

00:04:10: Last but not least we have Umesh Marumuddali.

00:04:14: Umesh is an economist and a researcher specializing in international finance political economy.

00:04:24: He is currently reading for his PhD in Development Policy and Management at the Global Development Institute, GTI which is at University of Manchester.

00:04:33: And he's funded there through a UK Economic & Social Research Council scholarship.

00:04:41: His research focuses on Chinese loans public finance, public debt middle-income transition and political economy of global finance myth of Chinese debt trap, China-Global South Relations and International Finance.

00:05:00: His research was published in prestigious international affairs journal Asian Perspective Journal, Asian Journal for Radical Science, Routledge And China Africa Research Initiative at the John Hopkins University.

00:05:16: Welcome to the podcast!

00:05:17: Thanks for joining us today Leah.

00:05:19: maybe you could take on The first question if you like.

00:05:25: Yes, thank you.

00:05:25: It's pleasure maybe to start off this conversation.

00:05:30: we would like to ask

00:05:32: all

00:05:32: how is geopolitics lived and experienced in urban context the urban contexts that you studied?

00:05:39: Maybe Johanna Would You Like To Go First.

00:05:42: Thanks

00:05:43: Leah.

00:05:43: I'd love too And thanks Nitin for having us here today.

00:05:48: So The Context In Which I Study This process is in Cuba.

00:05:53: In the competition for global Hajunmini, Cuba has had an important role.

00:05:58: historically.

00:05:59: it's been an important territory since the early days of colonialism and it remains quite significant today even if in slightly a more symbolic way although I think that the increasingly frequent appearance of US drones surveilling the island indicates that there's probably still a spatial component to.

00:06:18: I think geopolitics impacts our lived experiences of the urban fabric, no matter where we are.

00:06:26: We just notice it more in certain cities and certain people notice it More And i Think part Of that comes down to how much autonomy and control national and municipal governments can exert over their urban space?

00:06:39: Then To How Exposed We Are at an Individual Level by which I mean how much we're able to use resources to avoid or shield ourselves from the undesirable impacts

00:06:49: of geopolitics.

00:06:51: Havana, which is a national capital and by far the largest city in Cuba provides some really illustrative examples on both these criteria.

00:06:59: that's what i'm gonna sort talk about.

00:07:01: So I've been exploring this topic through a rapid change in land use over the past three or four years, which is particularly salient.

00:07:16: Specifically, I've been tracing how a number of factors some of them domestic and many of them global in scale have contributed to this massive increase of informal shops known locally as puntos de venta which are generally unlicensed.

00:07:32: They're small-scale businesses that sell basic consumer goods like rice and chicken and cooking oil and toothpaste cookies beer increasingly also dried ramen so you know all the staples.

00:07:45: residential units in areas that have been zoned as residential, I would say previously the most strictly controlled heritage preservation zone.

00:07:56: So their appearance is an anomaly or at least a disruption.

00:08:02: and This change in land use is really reshaping neighborhoods.

00:08:06: It's changing traffic patterns and temporalities, senses of safety hygiene and sanitation access to goods and services informal property values.

00:08:17: it isn't completely unregulated And I argue its largely driven by factors beyond the island.

00:08:24: so specifically US policies towards Cuba and Cuban migrants have driven increasingly large and I would say hurried or urgent waves of out migration from Cuba to the

00:08:35: U.S.,

00:08:36: largely in anticipation.

00:08:43: And as we've seen in recent months, these policies aren't actually Cuba-specific.

00:08:47: They're just part of a broader approach to foreign policy and a push for global hegemony.

00:08:52: but the repercussions are felt in very personal intangible ways in Havana because of this intersection of political and personal exposure that I mentioned earlier.

00:09:03: When you add to that domestic changes the previously state-controlled socialist economy, plus advances in fintech that facilitate cross-border commerce.

00:09:17: In ways that circumnavigate this sixty four year old US embargo on the island and by then I mean platforms for peer to peer money transfer like Zell and Venmo in the U S platforms for online commerce and less regulated platforms.

00:09:35: Basically what you've got there is the opportunity for a budding new commercial sector.

00:09:39: So to simplify it, Cubans who migrate leave empty homes behind providing opportunities to use these spaces as small shops.

00:09:46: It's a bit more complicated than that but I won't go into now.

00:09:49: But they also send home remittances or in this case investments in the form of wholesale purchases of goods that can be resold.

00:09:57: And they also facilitate cross-border transactions, the circulation of funds and goods as their new access to U.S.

00:10:05: financial services creates possibilities for purchasing goods for import that Cubans on the island cannot access due.

00:10:14: Of course, domestic policy changes around the legality of non-state owned commerce and to the ability to import goods that increased access to the internet all lubricate this situation.

00:10:24: But I'd argue that the current explosion of spaces in a city is more driven by these migration patterns and the disruptions or reshaping of the urban fabric are the result of the informality of these changes.

00:10:38: So, the government's lack of interest or lack of ability to regulate new patterns of land use in this city which felt more by people who have less resources to shield themselves.

00:10:50: For

00:10:53: me, I think a lot about the ways that global geopolitics and territorial conflict shapes how people live together in urban spaces.

00:11:04: So that starts out with my earlier work in Lidoc Union Territory—the northernmost part of India on two contested borders one with Pakistan and one China-Tibet.

00:11:15: so there was thinking earlier quite close, marrying each other having each other over for dinner on a regular basis really completely enmeshed how the kind of rising Hindu nationalism and national scene in which it was understood that communalism or conflict between religious identities gets political attention to.

00:11:41: what you need, how these kind of national politics that are a legacy of colonialism shaped people's day-to-day life.

00:11:49: In terms who they're gonna fall in love with and how they feel safe for not safe from their neighborhood children and what schools to send their kids, too.

00:12:05: And all these things.

00:12:08: But more recently I've done work on What does it feel like?

00:12:11: To be from Lodak from a place Like the Himalayas From a small town and go to a giant cosmopolitan city that's very diverse but your red is an outsider.

00:12:22: So I've been with Mabel Gergen, working with college students from Ladakh or other places in the Himalayas to understand how they both use cities.

00:12:33: To shape their sense of self but also how experiences and cities especially like racialized discrimination are gender based discrimination.

00:12:42: How that shapes their sense themselves?

00:12:45: The future country that they're from.

00:12:50: So a lot of Ladakhese students, go to Delhi and Mumbai or Bangalore for higher education And on the one hand are often racialized as others.

00:13:03: They ask if their Chinese is called Nepali, marked as racial outsiders because it looks different.

00:13:14: That changes how people think about India.

00:13:16: On other hands sometimes going to art museums, they don't want to be engineers.

00:13:22: They end up in a queer pride parade.

00:13:24: They're thinking differently about gender issues but they still wanna go back to their small Himalayan town and then they go back kind of a different person and they are bringing that urban sensibility Often with the idea that we don't want our little village to become like Delhi, but at the same time.

00:13:48: We wanna live like we lived in Delhi But in this small village and yet there's no jobs or infrastructure To support us.

00:13:56: so we've been working on that.

00:13:59: And then Other thing that I've been thinking through is the question of their university as a temporal infrastructure.

00:14:06: So how universities are infrastructure?

00:14:08: here in the US South, universities were built to maintain white supremacy and class privilege into the future?

00:14:16: And now they're occupied by diverse folks trying to do something really different with the University than what it was intended for.

00:14:23: so That's the current project i'm working on.

00:14:27: Hi!

00:14:29: My work largely focused on Sri Lanka, which as you know got into this whole geopolitical rivalry because Sri Lanka ended up leasing a port to China.

00:14:42: So these ports doesn't locate in urban context.

00:14:44: so the purpose of discussion my I'm speaking based or research based at Colombo is the commercial capital in Sri Lanka.

00:14:55: Colombo is important because of the Sri Lanka's location.

00:14:58: It's very close to India, just thirty kilometers from where India is located.

00:15:03: so historically it plays a very central role in South Asia and also the context of Indian Ocean.

00:15:11: So different countries compete for this.

00:15:14: How these reshapes sort-of urban space by their life with people?

00:15:19: What approaches them?

00:15:20: two ways based on research.

00:15:22: One is that the busiest or largest port in south asia through which most of the shipments to india actually goes too.

00:15:31: so those ships have come to shrillanka before it goes.

00:15:34: In this port, you have different terminals that are owned by different countries.

00:15:40: For example the largest terminal is owned by China Merchant Port Company and these sort of upsets India.

00:15:46: then India came in.

00:15:48: another group now owns one of the newest terminals in Colombo Port.

00:15:52: And then you see there's a kind of geoconic fragmentation.

00:15:55: through that US tried to get into Indian non-terminal by through a development finance corporation loan, but they didn't really succeeded as the intended because that load wasn't needed at first place.

00:16:09: This was other on his projects to begin with.

00:16:11: so you see in the port there kind of geopolitical competition That is going on and further expansion The port takes place And then we'll see this competition expands as well.

00:16:22: Then You also See the urban spaces that are being transformed Because Sri Lanka was ablating to a million income country.

00:16:29: Now it's almost at the level of upper middle-income country.

00:16:31: You see with that, the Colombo is transforming into what you call a modern city.

00:16:37: Right in that context of the modern City?

00:16:39: You'll see lot of infrastructure being reshaped Into the lives off.

00:16:44: What details right.

00:16:47: so you see three things I would like to highlight based on my research.

00:16:50: one Is the Columbo port city which is built on a reclaim land from the sea given to China Harbouring Engineering Corporation for ninety nine years on a lease.

00:17:01: So right now there isn't much discussion about it, but you will see.

00:17:05: in future There'll be many discussions surrounding and then other urban landscapes such as one is the Lotus Tower which is Sri Lankan government owned by built by Chinese And that's another one called The Lotus Theatre Which is entirely funded by China.

00:17:22: Now these are sort of reshaping Colombo's identity because the growing middle class in Colomba also allowed to portray it as a modern city with sort of modern infrastructure.

00:17:36: Right now, It is largely financed through China either through investment or through loans.

00:17:42: In the case of the Lotus Tower that was alone The in-the-case of Port City.

00:17:47: That Is A Chinese Investment.

00:17:49: So you see, along with that the people's aspirations also get fulfilled and along those aspirations there is an intersection of external capital coming through.

00:17:59: And I think in future some competition will intersect with domestic political demands or urban geography.

00:18:11: then it won't become just about what the domestic populace wants but also how it interacts with geopolitical dimension of it.

00:18:23: Thanks Umesh, thanks Saru and thanks Jirana for sharing these everyday arrangements in assemblages that coalesce in response to geopolitical aspirations and competition.

00:18:35: I wanted to maybe follow up with a second question to all of you which is what forms of adaptation resistance in response to this sort of geopolitical aspiration and geopolitically fumpetition, these very situated contexts that you described.

00:18:52: So maybe we could begin with you, Jayana.

00:18:55: If there's one characteristic that defines the Cuban people... it's their capacity to adapt and resist.

00:19:01: In particular, I would say inhabitants of Old Havana who are more likely to be Afro-Cuban and low income and less likely to own their homes.

00:19:10: they're really legendary for their adaptability.

00:19:17: They've survived Spanish colonialism and US imperialism, and sixty odd years of revolutionary government.

00:19:23: And now they live in a strange kind of limbo in terms of politics and governance.

00:19:29: so to ground it in the example of land use I would say an act of resistance and adaptation is how people have been employing their access.

00:19:45: serve them.

00:19:47: Kind of contra what the government intended.

00:19:49: so in old Havana for context The majority of homes In the neighborhoods that I'm looking at are not actually owned by?

00:19:57: That people who inhabit them.

00:19:59: they're owned By, the state and the people whom inhabit.

00:20:01: Them have use to fruit rights To those homes which means that They can permute them sort of exchange them but they Can't sell them And they can't re-rent some or anything like that.

00:20:11: and So it puts him a disadvantage in this sort of migration process.

00:20:16: So the mass exodus of Cuban citizens that we've seen over the last couple years caused real estate values to plummet, and official numbers are unavailable.

00:20:28: But as I said a larger proportion of residents in Old Havana don't own their properties when compared to residents on other parts of the country.

00:20:36: And while Cubans island wide were trying to sell private real estate Residents of Old Havana were selling their state-endowed rights or use it for rights, or state rentals.

00:20:47: For anything that they could get.

00:20:49: so there was informally passing the right to other people in order have enough cash undertake their migration journeys.

00:20:56: and average cost to migrate from Cuba US in this period range from four thousand eight thousand dollars U.S.

00:21:03: Dollars and factor is what determined lowest price.

00:21:06: many people willing accept access properties.

00:21:11: Again, price data officially is very hard to come by but I think the prices in Havana fell by about sixty percent between twenty-twenty and twenty twenty four.

00:21:20: So Cuban people who owned property were able to sell that property and had this sort of emigration advantage.

00:21:28: And many of the latter group people with Yusuf fruit access chose to illegally rent their homes to neighbors for use as commercial spaces, such as these punto sedentar sales points or barber shops are nail salons hoping to pay off the debts that they incurred in order to undertake their migration journey.

00:21:46: So they kind of leveraged this access to property state mediated access to properties.

00:21:51: collateral and significantly since these businesses aren't formally recognized their impacts on the city aren't accounted for in municipal planning and resource distribution, services such as waste collection or street lighting road repair or policing.

00:22:10: All of these factors that have created this opportunity are informal unstable and highly changeable.

00:22:19: So even domestic economic and monetary policies, which we would assume in most cases are quite stable actually changed on a I would say monthly basis frequently within Cuba making it risky for people to invest informalizing businesses.

00:22:33: so The leveraging of these spaces has enabled all sorts of people to undertake migration journeys that they otherwise wouldn't have been able too, or to fund their children's migration journeys.

00:22:50: Or I would say even to find their own permanence in the city but with sort of an additional stream of income which they wouldn't had otherwise.

00:23:00: and all this is flying under the radar.

00:23:02: so i see Everyday resistance and a form of adaptation because with this explosion, the informal economy for basic goods which previously were provided through rations by the Cuban state.

00:23:16: Which are increasingly being retracted All of us, some people need new forms of income because otherwise they can't afford to survive.

00:23:24: They can't avoid food and medicine that was previously provided by the state which is now sort-of providing on market economy.

00:23:31: So I see this form of informality as a really inspiring form of adaptation in everyday resistance.

00:23:39: It's so interesting how you're thinking about land use In that way...I'm not really compelling For me going to talk, I guess i'm talking all about college kids.

00:23:50: So studying out with the university students from the Himalayas...I think something that was super interesting.

00:24:00: when folks are in these big urban settings and they're from Ladakh, which is the northwest part of the Himalayas.

00:24:08: But then a lot of them get mistaken for folks who are from the northeast And sort all folks form the Himalayas are just blended together into an outsider status.

00:24:20: What's been interesting for us is that even though there are so many cultural and linguistic differences, like they don't eat the same foods.

00:24:28: They don't speak the same languages—so many things are different.

00:24:31: but a lot of these students from really different places kind do end up coming together being roommates in creating new sense of identity as a little bit oppositional to urban or mainland India where I've heard folks down from the plains called like Downpaw or people from down there.

00:24:56: So they're kind of creating a different fashion sense, where they are looking to East Asia for how to cut their hair and style their clothing that thing by creating some subculture which I find very compelling but also quite geopolitical in its own way because Korea has tried to do soft geopolitics through pop culture.

00:25:20: So it's interesting to see how that gets picked up by folks from the Himalayas, not I don't think the intended audience.

00:25:29: And then back here closer to home one thing that i find very compelling if we think about The University like I said as a kind of temporal infrastructure where was built for white men sons To become political and economic leaders.

00:25:50: So here we've seen Black and Indigenous students trying to make their own place on campus.

00:25:57: And sometimes that's meant student movements tearing down our Confederate monument, changing the name of my building... trying to really intervene in the built environment, in order to make this place more habitable for folks who are descended from people enslaved by university founders.

00:26:17: So we've seen those kind of interventions that I think.

00:26:22: And then also, of course our university is built on stolen indigenous land and also was funded in the nineteenth century by the theft of land that's really distant hundreds of miles away from us.

00:26:34: The University acquired Cherokee and Chickasaw Land.

00:26:37: So you see those acts of dispossession, but then you see native students building really lasting institutions like an annual powwow.

00:26:49: Like Carolina Indian Circle kind of creating these informal institutions on campus that have really maintained over decades?

00:26:59: I'm going to approach this question based on the adaptation.

00:27:04: resistance and negotiations come from different groups of people.

00:27:08: because If we take a look at the investment to the port city, when the Port City was open because initial investment was done by China Merchant, sorry, China Harbor Engineering Corporation.

00:27:24: Now there are land plots available to purchase rather to lease.

00:27:30: now most of these purchases interestingly actually come from Sri Lanka's real estate companies.

00:27:37: You see that particular group The ones who sort of push the non-tradable sector growth or that real estate kind of growth, they are getting into this bandwagon and using Colombo Port City as a place for investment.

00:27:53: Because obviously there see these places where if you make some real estate investments They can make massive amount profit because of location.

00:28:03: And in addition to that, the Colombo Port City gets more tax exemptions than an investment you make on other parts of Colomb.

00:28:12: That sort of pushes these companies to adapt.

00:28:17: So this adaptation largely comes from mostly real estate companies.

00:28:22: and then there are business conglomerates who want to invest in port city in probably the financial services or like real estate, or some hotels that sort of thing.

00:28:34: So there's no real value investments going on.

00:28:38: but most of these adaptations come from business elites who want to make fake bucks largely based on this speculation.

00:28:46: then from where the resistance is coming.

00:28:50: So, the resistances come in parallel to the ports and development.

00:28:53: we also see some other real estate development activities going into Colombo.

00:28:57: for example Havik China Aviation Corporation doing some Real Estate Development Parallel to other domestic real estate developments in Colombos.

00:29:06: so this changed the Colombos landscape.

00:29:09: Colombo, upper middle class is sort of loving it because they see this as very nice aesthetic way of presenting the city.

00:29:17: But most are people who reside in Colombeau like ones from lower middle classes or those that are more informal settling.

00:29:27: They sort of resist these.

00:29:30: So previous governments we saw them use authoritarian mechanisms to take those people out of those places and then give them different kind of apartment complexes rather away from the central Colombo, right?

00:29:46: Sort of like.

00:29:47: maybe there's a special dimension.

00:29:51: Negotiation largely comes from groups that are in between these resistors.

00:29:58: that's large in the political elite, because political elites needs to find a common solution where they please.

00:30:06: both set up these groups.

00:30:09: Where there is capital and where there are votes right?

00:30:12: So they negotiate from global capitalist and also from the geopolitical based investments that are coming in order to satisfy both of them.

00:30:24: so So I think in going forward, these resistances would take a different form.

00:30:32: I have a feeling that the upper middle class would start resisting some of this investment because when real estate prices go up it is becoming unaffordable to the middle classes as well which will result in resistance become much more stronger and not only lower-class.

00:30:53: you see middle class people also adding to that resistance.

00:30:58: So, so that's how it shaping there in Colombo?

00:31:02: Yeah I just um listening to both of you Sarah and Umesh.

00:31:06: they're first of all Umesh.

00:31:09: i have to say I really love how your differentiating between adapters resistors and negotiators .I think that's something that I need to pay a bit more attention too.

00:31:17: ,so I really appreciate the value of distinguishing in all three cases, although they're completely unrelated and we're coming from very different perspectives.

00:31:29: And looking at different populations what it- What we have in common is how the value of land an urban space power in both, I should say control over those spaces channels or shifts power and both like these big spectacular ways but also these sort of quiet and mundane ways.

00:31:59: And while i was at first listening to Sarah thinking oh this doesn't have that much to do with what i'm thinking about territory and land use.

00:32:07: it really does!

00:32:09: It has a lot legally informally belong and where they're placing themselves, what they have access to.

00:32:18: And of course Ume should like very tangible legal rights too land in real estate and things.

00:32:25: I just am finding it really inspiring.

00:32:27: When

00:32:30: I'm listening to you reflect on the conversation, i realized something.

00:32:35: I've thought a lot about is also our Palestine encampment which directly connects to what your saying because it just was thinking of the ways that we had a palestine encampments for three days here at university two years ago and me and my daughter slept there so were very familiar with them.

00:32:59: Of course students think of the university as their property in a way.

00:33:04: It's like they're home, they identify with it so closely.

00:33:08: They feel like its theirs and So it felt in some ways natural for students to be putting up tents all over the lawn.

00:33:14: But then these like flimsy little tents are

00:33:17: not.

00:33:18: we had a debate With um Dean of Students about whether tents our infrastructure and they were arguing if the tents are stuck to the ground.

00:33:28: They're in infrastructure, so it's kind of an interesting conversation about what is infrastructure?

00:33:35: And also even though tents are by nature impermanent but just a possibility of permanence was so threatening folks in these big stone buildings.

00:33:46: So I feel like that point about who has legitimacy or who has the power to kind of decide what happens and not happens really came up in that kind of crisis moment.

00:33:57: add a small thing too, what Joana mentioned because The land value and the land use.

00:34:03: i don't know about other countries but i'm taking Sri Lanka as an example.

00:34:07: so probably have a hunch that southern countries may follow this suit given the kind of middle-income transition that Sri Lanka is going through.

00:34:16: So, Sri Lanka recently saw a surge for real estate companies.

00:34:21: and then there's two big real estate company interesting need.

00:34:26: they advertise to the Dias, Sri Lankan diaspora in UK US Australia where their money?

00:34:34: And couple of advertisements.

00:34:36: I immediately saved those it exclusively said percent return every year, you can double your investment in four years.

00:34:47: Now there's no way you make twenty-five percent returns elsewhere and it is clear.

00:34:52: so thus far we haven't seen speculative investments in Sri Lanka real estate.

00:34:57: It hasn't been that much of course its being there.

00:34:59: but now we see the shift from real estate becoming more into a speculative investment rather than need Right.

00:35:09: And in that becoming, that need because of these two companies that also have subsidiaries and UK Australia largely catering to trade outcome diaspora.

00:35:19: That sort of reshapes the land value The land use and probably would result in land than the real estate Becoming out-of-reach for many other middle class.

00:35:32: just wanted to add that Because I think Joanna made that point then there was a pretty crucial

00:35:38: Yeah, and if I can just jump back again listening to Sarah talk about the encampments And when you said it was only three days.

00:35:46: And I think When you talked about The university is temporal infrastructure.

00:35:51: Again this significance of scale Really seems very salient To me of the fact that something that happened for Only Three Days Can have such a significant impact as It Is having?

00:36:08: It also sort of parallels to me the fact that in my case, these are very individual decisions.

00:36:13: They're not some massive level state-level commitment to build commerce or push for people to migrate.

00:36:22: These are individual decisions of individual families but there's so many of them.

00:36:27: they layer on top each other and create demographically quite a significant scale impact.

00:36:34: I think your case demonstrates this Temporally, it was very short the actual intervention but The impact of it is temporally.

00:36:43: Very significant and umisha's case kind Of highlights that like you would not think.

00:36:49: shreya lincoln diaspora Is like a significant huge demographic in the world.

00:36:54: however In relation to the amount of real estate and the opportunities for investment in a country, they wield significant amounts influence.

00:37:04: So their impact is demographically financially much larger scale than again those are personal decisions that people making.

00:37:11: I'm going invest here or migrate.

00:37:17: And so it really highlights to me the significance of the fact that when we think about resistance and adaptation, It's very seldom something you see in newspapers as a geopolitical global scale movement.

00:37:44: Thank you, all of you.

00:37:44: I would like to follow up maybe on that last point about the different scales and flavor of infrastructure because it's a topic that clearly comes in all your work with the port in Sri Lanka, the temporary infrastructure at the university or even urban fabric of Havana.

00:38:07: so... to ask you if possible, maybe develop this point and really discuss how do uneven infrastructures produce really differentiated urban experiences.

00:38:22: Joanna can start?

00:38:24: I would say in a word capitalism.

00:38:27: so the Cuban

00:38:29: context

00:38:30: reliance on imported goods and components of production, it like you know we know from all sort of post socialist transitions really increases vulnerability to external shocks.

00:38:41: And as the recent US fuel blockade on Cuba has highlighted that is still sort of a relevant risk for Cuba.

00:38:49: So while the increase in availability of goods benefits anyone who can afford access to them in Cuba, The informality of this new supply chain that Cubans have quickly come to rely on means their access to basic consumer goods is not equal and it's not stable And thats different from Cubans who've been relying on state provided rations.

00:39:11: largely Even energy infrastructure further aggravates this differentiated experience of urban consumption, for example.

00:39:24: Because both rolling and multi-day island wide blackouts make investment in perishable goods a really high risk endeavor.

00:39:32: so unless you've invested in your own inner energy infrastructure it's very risky to buy perishable good because end up without refrigeration at any moment and you will have no idea for how long that might last.

00:39:45: Commercial sites has been reliant on gas-powered generators historically to keep their refrigeration running, and a handful of households in each neighborhood may also have a gas power generator but usually those are households the unevenness of the infrastructure quite drastically for a while because obviously if you could afford to secure refrigeration, You were less likely to lose money that was invested in perishable foods during blackouts which meant That you could risk buying larger quantities of food Which means that you got the food at lower prices right?

00:40:19: Because ostensibly If you're buying more.

00:40:21: You can often access wholesale prices.

00:40:24: The current fuel crisis on the island, though means that these generators are actually more difficult to keep going.

00:40:30: And solar power generators that are available in Cuba are not quite as powerful and they're significantly more expensive so they represent an even more uneven form of infrastructure.

00:40:40: So that's just one little example Of That sort of differentiated urban experience.

00:40:46: when I talk about the ability that individuals have to protect themselves or shield themselves, or avoid the discomforts of geopolitics?

00:40:58: Here I feel like referencing some other scholars who are so smart on these topics.

00:41:04: So...I really love Helga Tawil Suri has this work on checkpoint time and how checkpoints in occupied Palestine fundamentally shape people's access to time, how you can't predict closed and so then your time is completely frozen.

00:41:29: So I think she writes really in a smart way because i have this collective desirable features for everything about time, so I've been thinking about time all the time...so I feel like she has really smart on it in that way and thinking about how infrastructure can change your relationship to time..I also have uh former PhD student Pallavi Gupta who's done this work related Indian infrastructure and the railways, and the ways that the railway are fundamentally this.

00:41:59: You know everybody talks about like oh but we've got to railways.

00:42:02: um so she-and we have all a sentimental attachment I think to their indian trains?

00:42:10: We love to take a train somewhere!

00:42:12: But then she's thinking about the folks who clean the train stations And The way That They Are Almost All Dollets And the way that they have to often wait till labor, They have to show up early To get a temporary like their contracted so That they don't have A direct government job instead Their contract workers.

00:42:32: So their labour is uncertain.

00:42:34: They Have to Show Up and Wait for an hour or two Before they can Get a Job so that other folks can travel quickly all over the country.

00:42:47: So there's this like differentiation between who cares for the infrastructure and who benefits from the infrastructure, then that's a long kind of lines of... Like Johanna said it's almost always about capitalism!

00:42:59: There we see our racial capitalism around caste.

00:43:03: I think those things quite a lot.

00:43:09: What is the kind of lyrical way to think about time and difference in this city?

00:43:13: I really love that work, uh... That's captured on the book Why Is Loiter by Shilpa Padga & others where it's a call for women to loiter.

00:43:23: To do nothing in the City!

00:43:25: To like walk at night to know-where.

00:43:28: There also an activist collective who has had this meet-to-nap Oh my goodness i'm forgetting her name.

00:43:35: Think This was in Bangalore.

00:43:36: so there activist collective that's just like, let's add up a time and lets all just nap in the public park as women do nothing.

00:43:45: We're going to monopolize doing nothing on time or space.

00:43:48: And similarly there are girls at Davos in Pakistan this movement of hang out with a traditional masculine urban space, let's hang out and do absolutely nothing.

00:44:01: Just

00:44:01: chillout.".

00:44:02: And I kind of love that as a refusal of capitalism

00:44:06: in a way—of

00:44:08: working all the time.

00:44:09: and if the gendered nature of space?

00:44:11: The idea to like take rest and take time and to do so publicly…I love those ideas!

00:44:18: So i'm going to approach this question.

00:44:20: um...as an extension to the previous one.

00:44:24: how does this happen in Colombo?

00:44:26: in the case is you clearly see the class dimension to this sort of extension to what Joanna mentioned.

00:44:33: Most of these modern infrastructure, whether now it is Chinese finance or it is financed by the Sri Lankan real estate companies These are accessible only to a certain class Of people right?

00:44:46: Now upper middle-class has the access.

00:44:49: today's for example They have the ability to go to port city which has like a duty free shop a fancy restaurant, the Lotus Tower.

00:44:59: If you go to Colombo that has a restaurant that goes across You could see this city.

00:45:05: That is moving and again also quite expensive.

00:45:09: Then there's The Lotus Theater which is again Chinese financed.

00:45:15: There are high-end theaters.

00:45:17: to attend concert in that theater Also you have to spend a substantial amount of money.

00:45:22: So if we look at these infrastructure and then by extension whatever the apartment buildings that are being constructed, are exclusive to a certain set of people.

00:45:32: An average person or law-income person which is most people in Sri Lanka does not have access to this infrastructure.

00:45:41: And these unevenness continues.

00:45:44: and also this unevenness is being reciprocated in other sections as well because middle class or upper-middle class has a substantial say, in political lobbying.

00:45:56: And the political parties included this government is quite afraid of their voices and would design the urban infrastructure around their needs.

00:46:05: We therefore don't see much of infrastructure being done or the railway stations in the suburbs, rather you see more of it happening around the Colombo and also to access private transport so on.

00:46:25: There's quite a bit of condescending tone coming from upper middle class about some behaviour of other people treating that this is more like an exclusive very clean and I'm not saying it shouldn't be clean, but they're like why can't you act in a certain way?

00:46:49: In this infrastructure.

00:46:52: So there's that condescending tone coming from them almost saying that these infrastructures should exclusively for certain set of people.

00:47:02: so that creates this very interesting class division within Colombo and also by extension to some of the suburbs, where this infrastructure are limited through a certain set or people.

00:47:18: Very interesting you see being admired from other South Asians as well.

00:47:25: like very anecdotal example Sri Lanka hosted the Cricket World Cup recently.

00:47:30: when Sri Lankan infrastructure is shown on TV A lot of Indians, very interestingly admire this thing.

00:47:37: that is the kind of development we want.

00:47:40: So you see South Asian middle class jumping on the bandwagon and endorsing these models in an exclusive infrastructure for upper-middle classes by excluding rest of it in a very condescending way.

00:47:57: so I'll leave.

00:48:02: You both said something that made me think a lot about the significance of why I care.

00:48:07: About, Why this is happening or how This Is Happening in Havana?

00:48:11: Umesh you said this sort of condescending tone Of How People Should Use Space and Really Privileging How Certain Classes use space In The Research That i Did Previously on Young People's Use of Space in Old Havana And How That Was Changing as A result of Touristification distinguish between people who had access to a lot of private space and therefore could have like living rooms or backyards where they could do whatever they wanted without the sort of surveillance of the public, versus young people who lived in really cramped overcrowded conditions.

00:48:48: In old Havana Who had to use public plazas and squares and parks as their living room right.

00:48:55: so that's developmental work of adolescents, which meant that they were exposed to the surveillance of other people.

00:49:03: And so as increasingly spaces in old Havana that were previously informal spaces for young people to hang out have been enclosed and commodified and sanitized As part of this project of touristification Young People Were Being Deprived Increasingly Of Places To Be Young Places Just Hangout.

00:49:22: this concept of loitering that Sarah brought up reminds me the term like Fleneuse, which is you know...the feminist interpretation or somebody who an intellectual just experiences The City and walks around enjoys it without any productive intention.

00:49:37: And so this really makes me think about the right to The City why we care so much how urban space was used in shape.

00:49:47: And I think that my concern is, as these sales points emerge and are unregulated.

00:49:53: therefore they can be everywhere at every moment.

00:49:59: This sort of claiming space for productive endeavours which has historically not been what's going on in the neighbourhood impacts people And the way in which it impacts the lives of people really depends on how much people rely on or are bound by different aspects of the urban fabric.

00:50:20: So from like a feminist methodology perspective, I'm paying attention to where kids are playing and where parents feel safe having them play?

00:50:29: How people socialize and how those patterns have changed as a result of having strangers walk down your street because they know there's a sales point that might sell something that they want when previously no one would walk except people who lived there.

00:50:43: How it affects women carrying things, how would affect people accessing the entryway to their building?

00:50:50: How it effects how clean and safe an available spaces in the street which are really important spaces for people in Old Havana where housing is very small and overcrowded and therefore public space is really essential to every developmental sort of social experience.

00:51:11: how different people experience the urban fabric in different ways, what I'm concerned about is expressions of leisure or you know production are starting to compress the ability of people who don't fit into those classes, to use the city in ways that suit them and that they need.

00:51:39: And how those functions.

00:51:41: we do not associate a dollar value too but related things like social reproduction or safe existence or health being impacted.

00:51:51: when we're not measuring

00:51:56: few minutes if someone else would like to add something, a few sentences that you feel you'd want.

00:52:06: Feel free!

00:52:08: Can I add one small thing?

00:52:10: Because I think Joana and Sara brought the gender dimension between them.

00:52:19: There's significant transformation going on in both urban areas and also politically, economically in most countries that are going through the Millicom transition because as Muslims get educated.

00:52:32: I'm talking based on two examples.

00:52:34: In my experience in Colombo a lot of women now coming into workforce And that sort of changes things.

00:52:40: The amount of catching up That this urban infrastructure and settings has to do is quite a bit To accommodate these.

00:52:50: these, you know cities or urban infrastructure to be safe places for women and clearly this catching up is very slower.

00:53:00: how the rest of things are progressing.

00:53:02: You don't see amount of safe spaces being built ,you don't se amount effort been put into that.

00:53:09: .You dont' see many people having knowledge on making it a safe space for women set of issues and also resulting in some women, you know facing different inconveniences so on.

00:53:24: It's not just women.

00:53:25: we see this with other marginalized groups as well.

00:53:29: but the point is that there isn't enough talk about how that transformation is accommodated within an urban setting.

00:53:43: interventions also focus on it.

00:53:45: It's just focused or like the very quantitative, or like they're just infrastructure itself, it excludes that social dimension how people get accommodated into especially women because their accommodation is much more significant in a country that goes through this middle income transition.

00:54:06: Mesh, can I offer a word for this that will help?

00:54:10: is it's not slower and about accommodation.

00:54:14: It isn't being prioritized because of value right?

00:54:18: And if we frame as lagging behind but intentionally not being resourced to be prioritized...

00:54:26: No i agree you were raising your hand.

00:54:30: The only thing I was going to ask is like, i was curious about both of your methods because we didn't really talk about how folks do their research.

00:54:40: Yeah, my methods have really evolved.

00:54:42: I started with sort of art space methods engaging teenagers adolescents in trying to understand how they did identity work in public spaces in this part of the city.

00:54:56: and then what i found was those methods definitely generated a lot of data but so did sitting around waiting for everybody and sitting around waiting for dinner to get delivered, or walking people home after our activities.

00:55:12: And so the sort of more ethnographic methods of just experiencing this city in a way that other people I'm researching with experience.

00:55:22: the City ultimately gave me a bit more of an indepth I would say like affective experience of the sort of frustrations or fears, our challenges are excitements and opportunities that urban space provided.

00:55:38: This was not intentional research, this is just me being there doing other research noticing that these shops were everywhere and they are in my way.

00:55:46: People were dumping having a can of beer then dropping it on the ground right outside at the shop.

00:55:55: It's to interrogate what it was that was going on.

00:55:59: And then I did an audit of a street near the place where I live when i'm in Havana and uh, went and sort of looked at the land use change and I spoke to all of the people who had opened businesses.

00:56:12: and That's how I got sort of this understanding Of What The Connection To The Global Geopolitics Were So like.

00:56:18: why?

00:56:18: Did you open This?

00:56:19: When Did You Open This?

00:56:20: Where Do These People Go?

00:56:21: Why Did They Leave?

00:56:22: Who's Sending You Money?

00:56:23: Who's Helping You Buy Things?

00:56:25: Um so those sort of conversations So really ethnographic and focused on the very individual, in my mute and mundane experiences of the city.

00:56:37: Most of my research also stemmed from living In this space And I saw this transformation The kind of urban transformation that went through Then.

00:56:49: i think it's pretty much like you know Also like ethnographical For me, not in the way that Joana does it because I technically lived in Colombo for years.

00:56:58: So why?

00:56:59: I went through that transformation and saw Dhani vendors when myself tried to find a land...I saw how speculative market is becoming so its more of living experience And also how free shapes lot people's lives and city by extension auto-ethanographic or paying attention to everyday geopolitics.

00:57:25: So on that note, I would like to end this conversation.

00:57:28: thanks a lot Joana and Sarah.

00:57:31: Thanks so much for joining the conversation today.

00:57:35: It was really great!

00:57:36: I learned about every day social actors how they engage in make sense of urban geopolitics.

00:57:42: it is truly enriching.

00:57:44: So dear listeners This is it In this mini series on cities and geopolitics.

00:57:49: We hope that you enjoyed listening to this five-part mini series, if you did.

00:57:54: Please do consider sharing it with your friends.

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00:58:22: urbanpolitical.polyg.io.