Progressing Planning

In our fourth podcast in the Progressing Planning series, Meera Kumar, project officer at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA), explores NJEDA's response to the Covid-19 crisis and looks at ideas on how to efficiently support the economy in difficult times. 

This podcast also discusses the role of NJEDA as an economic booster for Black and LatinX business owners and entrepreneurs, helping in accessing public and private capital and thinking how NJ cities can benefit from such investments.

In this podcast, Dr Jessie Speer Assistant Professor in Human Geography at the London School of Economics delves into exclusionary property law in the US, looking at the “legal fiction of property law” to explore the insidious nature of a framework that centers on the right to exclude. 

She also talks about her book project, stressing the urgent humanity crisis around demolitions and insufficient anti-homeless policies. Jessie uses intersectionality to approach the plurality of housing experiences and the critical importance of including voices that are too often overlooked in theory and policymaking. She leaves us with her take on what she sees as a potential way forward in achieving fairer urban environments.

In this episode, we had a discussion with Dr. Romola Sanyal , Associate Professor of Urban Geography at the London School of Economics. Romola has a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.  Her research focuses on forced migration and urbanisation.

In this podcast Romola talks about her study on urban displaced populations and refugees. In particular, she discusses urban humanitarian policies to support displaced people in cities explaining the pros and cons of the neighbourhood approach.

Our first guest for this series of podcasts exploring how urban planning is fostering change in contemporary society was Lindiwe Rennert, a transport planner and PhD student in the department or Geography and Environment at the LSE.

In this episode, we talked about the role transport planning carries in shaping our cities, particularly exploring themes of race, property value and access to services. We also discussed the case for reparation and the importance of increasing access to opportunities for Black communities through public transport provision.