089R_African Railways could go bankrupt but this is not necessarily a bad thing & It will be the best of times, it will be worst of times: thinking about contemporary African railway mania (summary)
What is The Future for Cities?
English - October 31, 2022 22:00 - 9 minutes - 13.2 MBSocial Sciences Science Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Are you interested in Africa and its opportunities with railway?
Summary of two blog posts titled: African Railways could go bankrupt but this is not necessarily a bad thing and It will be the best of times, it will be the worst of times: thinking about the contemporary African railway mania from 2022 by Matthew McCartney published on the Charter Cities Institute website.
Matthew will be the next interviewee and this episode provides some background information on some topics we will discuss.
Additionally, since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how the African continent is progressing with railways. These articles present the contemporary situation, challenges and possible benefits of railways across Africa.
As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:
Although historical evidence proves that railways are basically bad financial investments, they are important for long-term economic growth, like education, broadband internet and good governance.
Railways can help long-term economic growth with making urbanisation, transportation and industrialisation easier, which later lead to paying for the railways.
The economic growth driven by railways can lead to institutional change.
You can find the first post through this link and the second through this.
You can find the transcript through this link.
What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available.
I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.