Unpacking Us

I talk to Fizzah Sajjad about why affordable housing in Pakistani cities remains an elusive policy dream. We talk about the reasons why there is so much unmet demand for housing, about the harms of speculative investment in housing, and how the Naya Pakistan Housing Program falls short of its objectives. Fizzah also draws on her comparative expertise to bring in lessons that Pakistan can learn from other countries.
Fizzah Sajjad is a PhD Candidate in Human Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics, where she's currently doing research on speculative practices in real estate. FIzzah is an MIT-trained urban planner, and has been working in this space for almost ten years both as a researcher and a practitioner.
Some links to what we talked about:

• The official website of the Naya Pakistan Housing Program.
• Fizzah references this UCLG report on Rethinking Housing Policies when discussing housing policy lessons from other countries.
• The Invisible Cities blog on Tanqeed that Fizzah used to work on. She references this post by Smita Rawoot in particular.

Fizzah's recommendation:

• A free online course by Gautam Bahn: ‘Housing Justice: A View from Indian Cities’

Asim Khwaja walks us through Pakistan's current economic crisis, and why the real solutions lie in long-term productivity increases. In the process, he also tells us what he learnt from a 5th grader during his recent visit to Pakistan, and on the important role that optimism plays both at a personal and structural level.
This episode was recorded before floods started wreaking havoc across the entire country. Here is a list of Pakistan and US-based charities involved in flood relief efforts. Please donate generously.
Asim Khwaja is the Director of the Center for International Development and the Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP).
Some links to what we talked about:

• Atif Mian's and Asim's own Twitter threads on the causes of the economic crisis.
• Asim's Twitter thread about his field trip where he met the budding brain surgeon.
• Asim mentioned my research on what politicians know about citizens. Here is a blog about it and here is the full paper.
• Asim complained that I asked him about everything but his own research. Until I ask him about it in a future episode, you can read about it here.

In Pakistan, election decisions can be dependent on either the party’s label or the party’s ideology. Currently, Pakistan’s political parties are facing a number of constraints in trying to influence the outcomes of voters’ choice during election time. Dr. Niloufer Siddiqui and Dr. Asad Liaqat discuss these constraints and how the upcoming election outcomes can be influenced by the way parties are structured and the way they interact with voters.
This is a guest episode from the "Let's Talk Development" podcast by CDPR.

Dr. Niloufer Siddiqui is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany-State University of New York (SUNY). She is a Nonresident Fellow at the Stimson Center and a Fellow at the Mahbub ul Haq Centre at LUMS. Her research interests include political violence, political behavior, the politics of religion and ethnicity, voters and foreign policy, and the politics of South Asia. Her book manuscript examines why political parties in Pakistan engage in violence or form electoral alliances with violent actors.

With all the buzz surrounding AI, we're missing an understanding of how recent AI advancements affect those in the global South. I talk to Rida Qadri about ways in which generative AI fails to represent those in the Global South, what the implications of these failures are, and what's needed to do better.
Rida Qadri is an interdisciplinary scholar focusing on the cultural impacts of generative AI for people and communities in the global south. She is a Research Scientist at Google Research, and has a PhD in Computational Urban Science and Masters in Urban Studies from MIT.
Both Rida and I are speaking in our private capacities, and neither Rida's nor my views expressed in this episode necessarily represent those of our respective employers.