15: GREEN RESURGENCE & GAZA RECONSTRUCTION (+Brexit, +rats, +Louvre heist, +AI Friend and more)

Released to coincide with World Cities Day on 31 October, this episode sees Beth and Tom first joined by Prof. Matthew Flinders (26:09) to discuss what the rise in fortunes of the Green Party, UK, under Zack Polanski, means for progressive politics in the UK, and for a city like Sheffield. Then, with Said Zaaneen (51:46), they dive into what the history of refugee camps in the Gaza strip tells us about the role of international humanitarian aid, and consider implications for future reconstruction. 

Also on our radar:

• The ongoing impacts of Brexit on Northern cities
• Rats and multi-species urban life
• Urbanisation, colonisation, colonialism & outer space
• Cable cars, white elephants and Gen Z protests in Madagascar
• The Louvre heist & the material fabric of the city
• Why New Yorkers are not friends with AI Friend

Guests:

Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics, Vice-President of the Political Studies Association and Chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network. A former special advisor in both the House of Lords and House of Commons, he specialises in theoretically-informed policy-relevant research including on accountability, blame and democracy. 

Said Zaaneen is in the final stages of his PhD here at the University of Sheffield on Humanitarian aid, socio-spatial dynamics, and the evolution of refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, focusing particularly on two specific camps in Gaza - Jabalia and Deir Al Balah. Said also has an MSc in Management and Implementation of Development Projects from the University of Manchester, and prior to his PhD had more than 10 years experience working in humanitarian and development projects in the Gaza Strip.

Read More:

Madagascar protests: how ousted president Andry Rajoelina’s urban agenda backfired

Decolonial Museology, Space Travel and the Mineral Cabinet | Museum & Society

Hosts:

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester.  His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441) 

Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)

Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com

You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast

Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello. In this episode of Urban Radar, we ask, what does the sudden rise in fortunes of the Green Party under Zach Polansky mean for progressive politics in the UK? And how might it reshape the role of cities in our increasingly volatile political landscape?

SPEAKER_01 0:28

What does the history of refugee camps in the Gaza Strip tell us about the role of international humanitarian aid in complex urban environments? And what might this mean for Gaza's future reconstruction?

SPEAKER_00 0:39

And in our radar, we will be talking about Brexit, Rats, Madagascar, and the Louvre Heist.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

And many other things besides.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

So welcome to Urban Radar, the podcast series that takes an urban lens on current affairs. I'm Beth Perry, Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute here at the University of Sheffield.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

And I'm Tom Goodfellow, Professor of Urban Studies and International Development here at the University of Sheffield. So, Beth, it has been quite a week, hasn't it? We're recording this towards the end of a week of extraordinary events. 10th anniversary celebrations for the Urban Institute, which you direct. Do you want to give us some of your highlights, lowlights?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

It's been amazing, actually. I'm quite tired. I think I remember saying on one previous episode that I was very urban buzzy, and I have been, but uh now I'm ready for bed. But we've had an amazing week, actually, an amazing month, an amazing year. I mean, this week there's a few things for people to look out for because we always try to make sure that you can join in and learn what we're doing, even if you can't be there in person. So we've had two keynotes, uh, one with Abdumalik Simone and one with Simon Marvin. We've had a panel um with uh Linda Westman, John Silver, and Zheng Li Huang on the global infrastructure race and the role of China. And the good news is we've recorded that for our next feature of Urban Radar. So that will be coming out in November. So yeah, we've had an amazing time and some brilliant people have come to join us. Um so I think we're all feeling quite nurtured and loved.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah, I mean it was an incredible event, particularly uh that that event on the Tuesday. I've only been involved in part of the week, but I'm still also quite tired. I think it's one of the I think we're at that level of tiredness where we can't necessarily tell how fast we're speaking. So if we're really slow, which is unlikely, you can put us on 1.25 speed. Um or you might want to slow us down. I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

I don't recommend anyone listens to us on two speed, though, because it is like gibbering chipmunks.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

So, Tom, what have we got coming up on this week's episode?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Okay, some very interesting and important conversations both in the UK and globally. So, for our first dive, we're joined by Matthew Flinders, who's a professor here at the University of Sheffield, to consider the latest upheaval in the UK political landscape in the form of the recent surge in support for the Greens under their new leader, Zach Polansky. So we're gonna consider what's behind this and how it relates to the broader trend of so-called populist politics in the UK. But also what it might mean for cities, how cities are governed. Different parties have very different ideas about local government, but also what this rise of the Greens tells us about the roles of role of cities in the new political geography of the UK. And then we're gonna be joined by Said Zanin, who's nearing the completion of his PhD here. And his work focuses on the history of the Gaza Strip, and particularly its refugee camps. He's from Gaza. He lived there with his family until they were displaced multiple times following the devastating war from 2023, and they're now here in Sheffield. We'll be talking about Saeed's research on the evolution of refugee camps in the Strip and how decades of humanitarian aid created these distinctive social and spatial challenges in the camps, and what does that mean for the future?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

And of course, first we're going to cover a few things on our radar. So let's crack on.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

So Beth, what's on your radar this week?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

So we're releasing this podcast on the 31st of October, which is World Cities Day, which marks the end of UN Habitats urban October. And so I thought I would pick up a few issues that we haven't spoken about very much so far on urban radar. So first, I'm going to talk about Brexit, because we've covered a lot of issues around the geopolitics of urban development and particularly the impact of global superpowers on towns and cities in the UK, whether that's through tariffs or AI investment, whether we've been looking at regional blocks in the US, Africa, Russia, or China. But we haven't talked about Europe as much, actually. And I think in part when I was reflecting on this, I felt a sense of responsibility because my undergraduate and master's degrees were actually in European integration between 1995 and 2000. And I studied the politics of the European Union and how relationships with the European Union as a supranational entity were and their relations with the subnational level were reshaping multi-level governance dynamics. This is why I'm really interested in some of the recent analysis about the impact of Brexit. And you really can't understand the current regional and local urban development policies and strategies in the UK without this backdrop of Brexit. So there have been several news articles this week reporting on the Chancellor Rachel Reeves' criticism of the negative impact of Brexit on the economy, that it's much worse than expected, and that costs have been needlessly added to doing business through Brexit. There's been some criticism that she has just been saying this to appeal to voters, or younger voters in particular, in advance of a budget that's going to be coming out later this year, in a kind of populist move. So it's like a recent UGO poll said that only 11% of people now believe that Brexit is a success, which is a massive reduction over the past years. And of course, many northern cities did also vote to leave, or in some places, cities were very split. Places like Sheffield, which we're going to use to think with later in our dive with Matt Flinders, actually was one of the most split cities in the UK, with 51% voting for leave and 49% voting to remain. When I did my work, I was really interested in what the positive impact was through things like the European Structural Funds and how that was helping places in the Northwest like Manchester and Liverpool to really think about their post-industrial revival. And now, of course, we're talking about what we've lost. So there's been some analysis by scholars like Philip McCann about the kind of negative impacts on economic development, labour, skills, regional inequalities, particularly badly hit are places where manufacturing and exports have been lost, or the loss, as I say, of European regional development and structural funds, reductions in investments or labour shortages, disrupted supply chains. And the impacts are quite variegated. So it's different for port cities like Hull or Liverpool than it might be for places like Sunderland that have really invested in the automotive sectors. And it's not just the North either. The Mayor of London commissioned a report from Cambridge Econometrics in 2024, which showed that London had 290,000 fewer jobs than before Brexit. And the analysis in that report was that the average Britain is £2,000 worse off in 2023 than before Brexit. Coastal regions also, you know, in terms of fisheries policies, the impacts are really, really widespread. So of course, I mean, go back to his main point being that Rachel Reeves is setting up Brexit before the budget. And I guess just linking forward to our dive with Matt Flinders, linking backwards to what we were talking about last radar with uh your party, you know, you've got this kind of Brexit is a really relevant backdrop alongside austerity and COVID. So people talk about the ABC, austerity Brexit, COVID, that has really changed conditions for people living in uh marginalized neighborhoods or low-income communities around the UK. And this is fundamental to the breakdown of the kind of traditional two-party political system.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

It reminds me as well, actually, of our discussion with Antonio Navas and uh a while back about the differential impact of the tariffs on British cities, depending on what they do. So these things are quite nuanced. And I think it is a moment where so those impacts of Brexit are coming coming to haunt cities more clearly and it's being spoken about more than it was. But also Brexit itself is coming back to haunt cities and the rise of the Greens and reform is something we really I mean, uh it was so striking at the time the the posters and the placards across Sheffield and how divided. If you if if you only spent time in west and southwestern Sheffield, you would think there is no way this city is going to vote legally. Well, actually it was on a very close knife edge.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

And it was quite uh split between the core and the periphery. So in general, the centres of cities, um, which were you know more student-led, more affluent, they have they voted remain and the outer areas across multiple cities in the north of England voted leave. I'm gonna move on to talk about rats. I just felt that if it's World Cities Day, I couldn't disappoint you, Tom, without some underground story. So a few days ago there were reports of how bin men in Glasgow were fighting rats off with shovels, and it was linked to bins not being collected and the resulting public health crisis. But it's a really big growing problem. There was a BBC article last month called Rat Mageddon, why rats are overrunning our cities. No, it's not a pun. You can write to them and tell them. Um the British Pest Control Association said that more than half their members have seen an increase in numbers of rats call-outs. And so obviously, usually rats live underground, uh in sewers, drains, burrows, traditionally come out at night, but they're being much bolder. This is a global problem anyway, not just in the UK. And cities worldwide are facing this. Washington, San Francisco, New York actually has an appointed rat czar who runs a rat academy to educate the public about how to deal with this problem. And there's a whole range of reasons, including fast food, fat burgs, reduction in rubbish collection, bin strikes, road and building works disturbing the sewers, and then increasing heat in cities, and which of course we've talked about quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Well, if we should say, just to say on the on the heat issue, because and the czar. I like this idea of a czar, and I think maybe we should do a czar special because I've heard of Town Sierra Leone now has an urban heat czar. I don't think they're called a czar, but they're like a special urban heat person. Then we've got a rat czar, and there's also nighttime czars and nighttime rooms. We could get all three of them in and kind of have a hot rat night conversation.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

That sounds great. I will reserve my question about what kind of urban czar you're going to be for later. But really, okay, so why am I talking about rats? Um, it's really about what this tells us about the urban condition, because I think we've actually been very focused on humans and non-humans, haven't talked about a more multi-species approach to thinking about cities. And yet, of course, animals are intimately entwined in many of the stories we've covered so far. So just on extreme heat, um, in a recent heat wave in New Delhi, hundreds of birds were found gasping for air and thirsty on the road. And underlying the urban radar stories that we've covered so far are these stories of animals that we haven't paid much attention to. So back in episode four, we were talking with Kira Chapman about bats, buildings, and big ideas, and we were talking about this inherent speciesism, the hierarchies and the characteristics of animals that make us look after them or not. And I do think when we talk about the right to the city, we often assume that we're talking about human rights, and it's kind of underpinned by this sense of human supremacy. And we have this idea that certain animals are in or out of place. Like so some animals we like, uh, others we don't. Rats, foxes, raccoons, crocodiles. We deem all of these pests, even if we've actually made the problems ourselves. And we like to control which species have rights to live and roam the cities. But of course, we love our pets, but then we have all of these other animals that we don't have such a close relationship with. We spend more on pets than dating and childcare in the UK, according to a survey by Nationwide. Um, according to The Sun, Britons leave seven times more money in their wills to animals than, for instance, to veterans or other causes. And of course, you remember Simon's talking about pet tech on the episode about cyborg urbanism, like this new technology that the affluent can buy into to play and monitor their pet while they're at work. Um, so there's this real hierarchy. I also am going to extend, I just want to talk about war and conflict a bit and what happens to animals in war, because animals are both providing this role in rescuing humans, but also often need rescuing themselves. There was a story in Africa News online about the animals in Khartoum Zoo, which is one of the oldest in Sudan, um, who were caught in the crossfire between rival forces in Mikhailev in Ukraine, 60 miles from the front line, like there's eight Russian rockets that landed in a zoo and peeps near missing these two female tigers that were born in captivity. Between them, they've birthed 47 cubs that have been part of a conservation programme. I know. And then, of course, you've got animals that are saving us. So there was another, I'm sorry, it's really harrowing article in the big issue about donkeys acting as animal ambulances to carry health and medical equipment across the rubble of Gaza because vehicles can't pass through. And they too, of course, have been facing starvation. So we talk a lot about medical aid for humans, but you know, there's a massive sort of organization of Palestinian vets that are trying to both support donkeys as animal ambulances and also then try and save the animals faced with all of this.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yes. Hot rat night.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Hot rat night. I'm going to do one more radar item, but it's quick. And it's designed to thwart your expectations, Tom. Um, because you always tell me I go underground, so I have to go as far away from the underground as possible, which is into space. SpaceX launched its 133rd Falcon 9 space mission of the year. Um, just imagine the fuel in climate terms. So, SpaceX, for those that don't know, or Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, is a private aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company founded by Elon Musk in 2002. And it just made me think briefly about the relationship between cities and space and how space travel and technology are integrated within cities and development in what's being called the urban space economy. And that also relates to forms of colonization of space itself and then also to colonialism. So bear with me and I'll give three examples. Like obviously, cities are home to a lot of space industry, like cities in the US, like Houston and Los Angeles. Cities test and apply different kinds of space technologies, whether that's satellites or GIS or robots having applications. Some space imaginaries are shaping how we think about cities, sometimes in a positive way, for instance, closed loop systems and how you can make the most of resources in that sort of environment. And obviously, cities are also branding themselves as gateways to space, like Dubai or Beijing or Tokyo. So lots of analysis about that. The impacts go two ways. That's the other thing I want to say. And so there's a set of questions around whether we're urbanising space and see some of the kinds of space stations as proto cities as we're trying to sort of colonize what's happening within space. Um there's Mars colonization plans, for instance, that uh Elon Musk and SpaceX have. And again, some of those, though, have applications that could be useful here about habitat modulation and living more sustainably. That kind of connects with some of the work at the UI about controlled environments. But I just want to end with highlighting some of the critical scholarship that's exploring intersections between space exploration, colonialism, and black lives, linking in some ways to the feature that we released last uh month, um, last week actually, and some of the work of exceptional black scholars such as Alana Osborne, whose work I engage with at the Ecologies of Black Living Conference. And Alana's at Radbood University in the Netherlands and wrote a piece in 2024 in the journal Museum and Society on space travel and the mineral cabinet. And in it, she's working back from mining for space travel to the processes of extraction on black bodies, using kind of space rocks in museum cabinets as entry points to think about this is in the Belgium's Royal Museum of Central Africa, to think about how terrestrial and extraterrestrial mining for space exploration is always based on the exploitation of black bodies. And more widely, I'll put the link to that paper in the show notes, but more widely, there's a real concern about settler logics of outer space and how settler colonialism on Earth and in space exploration marginalizes indigenous peoples. So, Tom, what's on your radar?

SPEAKER_01 16:16

So my radar, I mean, I'm actually also gonna grow above and below ground in honor of your um interest in these different levels.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Multi level governance, but kind of like this about that.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

But um, no, I'm gonna go back to your themes, some themes as well we've talked about, because there's so much stuff happening in relation to those themes, and this is specifically in relation to, let's say, Gen Z protests or young people um essentially protesting to the point where they overthrow the existing regime. There's been things happening in Peru, there's been things happening in Madagascar, elsewhere, but I'm gonna talk about Madagascar because what I thought was quite interesting here is this rather than being uh like perhaps the Nepal case, focused on a kind of old corrupt elite, it was much more about services, everyday service provision, particularly power and water, with people rising up at all these um problems in everyday urban services, but also the way in which those were thrown into relief by these massive investment mega projects, right? So people living in Antana Narivo and other parts of Madagascar um fed up with seeing these huge investments in these white elephant projects, while at the same time they can't get water or energy to the point where they uh were protesting for a long time, and then eventually there was a military coup to overthrow the regime. So it's have been a rapid sequence of events. I I was particularly interested in an article written by um a great piece written by Fanny uh Volin, I believe it is Volin, in uh The Conversation Africa about the protests and about the infrastructure projects that the government had been using to bolster its power and legitimacy. It reminded me actually of many of the arguments that David Jackman and I explore in our book, we discussed in episode three. But anyway, in this piece she talks particularly about the cable car, because there was this cable car um which was, you know, billed as the biggest cable car in Africa. I'm not sure there are that many anyway. Uh, and it cost an estimated $188,000 per day, sorry, per month in electricity bills. And this was at a time where people are not getting basic electricity for basic functions. So the cable car became this figure of a lot of the protests, and it was attacked and destroyed along with train stations and other things. So these kinds of forms of infrastructural citizenship, like violence against infrastructure to kind of demonstrate democratic and citizenship rights that have been written about by people like Antina von Schnitzler and Charlotte Lamansky. Um But yeah, I thought the cable car thing was interesting because they're they're almost the kind of the ultimate urban prestige project, and they can haunt cities very dramatically through being very visible, through sometimes horrendous accidents. And one really interesting example is the cable car of the Rio Olympics, which again was a big project supposed to somehow symbolize the connection of the favelas to the city in the run-up to the Olympics. But in fact, it was very underused, it didn't take people to the right places. Um it became this kind of white elephant project, and eventually the stations were used by police to surveil and police the favelas. So there's kind of a really interesting story about their surveillance control through overhead cable cars.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

This question of symbols is really interesting as well, though, because we're just thinking back to um Simon Rushton talking about what was happening in Nepal and he was talking about Hilton Hotel, and you know there's often this particular trigger that is about a symbol the cave the cable car, the hotel, the infrastructure, but the railway actually also often in Kenya and other things. But then there's these other symbols. So like I'm kind of interested in what Gen Z are doing around the reappropriation of the flag. Um so that's very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Gen Z, you want me to say Gen Z?

SPEAKER_00 19:30

I I think that you're gonna have to get with the times because actually the movement itself is calling themselves Gen Z.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

If you think that's what they want as a British person and get to the end, what do you say for the last letter?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

I say Zed, but I'm British and this is a global movement of decentralized. And you have to think about the self-identification of those that are protesters.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

I will think about it between now and then protest. But I'm glad you mentioned Nepal because also there was an explicit reference to learning, to watching that unfold that the Gen Z demonstrators used, and they actually adopted some of the imagery from Nepal in their protest. So that is really interesting. This stuff really is spinning around the world. Yeah, we've been talking about However, it was followed by a military coup, and now the pro the students are not terribly happy with the results of their protests. So this is you know a lot of historical echoes, including in places like Ethiopia, where student movements can result in new forms of authoritarianism. So I would say the precedents aren't that good. But I'm going to move on to the Louvre in Paris with this extraordinary heist that happened a few days ago. And I thought this was quite interesting. I'll be brief on this. But what really interested me is that somebody could go in and steal $100 million worth of jewels through these apparently really low-tech, lo-fi means, right? So it wasn't this kind of mission impossible situation where all these digital systems are being hacked and there's this highly sophisticated encryption. It was basically a bunch of guys who put up a ladder, wore high-vise vests, and like opened a window and went in and got the jewels. And I think there's something about this that's really telling us something about how we think about the city, because we have this sense of these increasingly sophisticated technical systems. We've talked about it a lot. It comes up when we talk to people like Simon Marvin and Abdul Malik, Simone. But um, it was interesting. There was an interesting piece in the Independent that talked about how and I quote, like basically how how little sophistication the attackers necessarily need. They need attention to detail and planning. But actually, this idea that you have these digital threats, in many ways, it's not about virtual access and encrypted data. And it's literally about a poorly guarded door or window, unremarkable information, right? So really basic stuff. So it was less kind of Mission Impossible or the Thomas Crown affair, and more like, I don't know, like the guys from the full Monty just kind of deciding to do a heist. So I think it reminds us about the the physical, basic physical realm in cities and how what's left exposed and what's hidden when we focus too much on these technical systems.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

But it does also just very quickly link back to your interest in pickpocketing in Venice. True. And you're thinking about the kind of the physical act, that low tech means of survival, um, that's based basically on human ingenuity and bravado.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Get the guts to do it. Sorry, that was not an endorsement. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

When we talked about pickpocketing, we were like, these people will have really basic need. I'm not sure that having a hundred million pounds in jewels is the same need. But well, maybe. I wouldn't mind. Anyway, let's move on. Finally, I'm going to talk about there always has to be a story about tech. I mean, there are so many stories about tech and AI, and you know, the data center stories run and run in terms of the kind of quite appalling outcomes of you hear about in places like Mexico, where sucking up all the energy and water leads to hospital machinery not working and things like that. But I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk briefly, uh, but not as briefly as I should, about this AI friend controversy, which is this um AI companion pendant that has been blowing up in New York, largely because the advertising all over the um subway has created some kind of outrage. Okay, it's like a pendant that you wear, it follows you around, obviously it listens all the time, and you can ask it questions, and it's supposed to be a friend. Um what's really interesting about this is like it's obviously not very sophisticated. It seems to be, from the way people have talked about it, kind of boring, sycophantic, uninspired. It can't even talk to you. You ask it a question, but then you have to look at your phone to see its written response, which kind of renders it pointless, right? You could do that with Chat GPT, whatever, but it's also much less sophisticated than that in terms of the information it can give you. And it's ugly, and obviously no one's gonna want to hang out with you if you've got this thing around your neck. So it's like, I find it very interesting that this product that's obviously not very good and they've hardly sold any, has blown up, particularly through the advertising campaign. So they put these posters all over the subway that were intentionally, it seems, full of blank white space with very little on them, for people to then kind of deface. And there was like all this anger and all this defacing of the posters to the point where it became a big story. And this guy, he's a 22-year-old guy who runs the company, spent apparently one million on this ad campaign that took over the subway in a really big way. They've only sold between 1,000 and 3,000 of these products, from what I've heard. Because it's it and it's obviously rubbish. But it's just really interesting the way the city has been a stage for this form of capitalism that is so kind of speculative. Because my sense is they know it's not a good product. And it's this idea that, well, if you get enough fuss, the company gets a name. At some point you'll be able to produce a better product and get some attention. But at the same time, there's this churning out of just rubbish products, and we're seeing it all over the tech sector. And the city is this kind of it's always been a site of speculation, but I feel like we're seeing this kind of wild, wild speculation, but through churning out, basically momentarily distracting. Um it's like it's like uh it's like the city is a stage for some kind of thing yet to happen, and this doesn't in a way take us back to Simone, and you know, um but and we don't know what it is, and nobody knows what it is. But it's it's it's sucking up a lot of money and resources and attention in ways without actually attention to what the social and consequences of these kinds of things might might eventually be. So I find it worrying and strange and you know, mildly amusing that these these rubbish products are kind of fueling a capitalist economy, it seems to me, on a kind of new level.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

I mean, there's always something about early front runners and tech failure, right? Before you get the products that work on the market. But it's so visible now because of the way in which social media and marketing and everything else works. But just a small reflection also makes me think about do you remember when we used to have those pet friends rather than AI friends? And actually, you know, Tamagotchis or whatever, and you'd have this little pet in your pocket that would meow at you or die if you didn't feed it. You know, so even in this digital realm, we have become so much more focused on humans, uh AI as an approximation of a human as our friend now, rather than our traditional fairy friends that I was talking about earlier.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

And it's like the product itself is not even the point, right? It's like it's as I say, it's it's not it's it's not much good. The whole thing, the protests, there were protests about it. There were people who made them out of cardboard and attacked them in city squares, images of these pendants. And then Heineken came in and didn't have a where they they mocked up the pendant as a as a bottle opener and said, a real friend is someone you share a beer with. So there's this kind of weird capitalist economy that's happening, but fuelled on yeah, on rubbish.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Maybe it's the implosive vectors of entropics we sort of.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

I think it is, and I was thinking about that and I wasn't going to say it, but I'm glad you did.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Listen to the last feature. So we better move on to our dives.

SPEAKER_04 26:07

We had.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

He's been a special advisor in both the House of Lords and House of Commons. Actually, there's a massive long list of prizes and books and peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters. But you can also find out more about what Matt's written through documentaries and podcasts and blogs, including one recently on Green Party politics, which is one of the reasons why we wanted to invite you on the podcast. So we're talking today about Green Party politics and whether or not the rise and surge in the Green Party offers hope, which is not something we deal with a huge amount on this podcast for a new progressive politics of the left. We were talking in a previous episode about your party and how movements get built and what this kind of means for the local level. But we've had a lot of focus on reform and right-wing populism. Um, and some people have been arguing that we're, because we're giving it so much airtime, we're almost making it happen. So, yeah, we need to think more now about what's happening with the Green Party. So, Zach Polanski uh got 85% of the vote share in the recent leadership election. Now more members than the Conservatives, really strong focus on economic justice. Um, and I just wanted to share something Owen Jones in The Guardian wrote, uh, arguing that the Green surge, however fragile, offers something rare in modern politics, the faint outline of an escape route from despair. So we want to use Sheffield a little bit as a city to think with as well. And Sheffield's really interesting because it's been under no overall control since Labour lost a majority in 2021. So the current administration is a collaboration between Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Greens. Labour's still the biggest, also got this new committee system where committee chairs are shared across the parties according to proportional representation. But because there's no overall control, you've got this sort of situation where national party differences are negotiated locally. And so we're going to tentatively pick up, just hypothetically, what the changing national landscape might mean for a place like Sheffield. Um, and I'm going to kick off by asking you a bit about how we account for the rise of uh the Green Party in the UK. Well, what do you think that the Green Party are offering that other parties aren't?

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Well, I think what's very, very interesting, and I think the reason why Zach Polanski has captured a certain narrative is that what he has brought to the table is an understanding that if any political party is going to connect and particularly connect with disillusioned parts of British society, they have to understand the importance of storytellings. And also for a Green Party, they need to go beyond a core focus on green issues. And already, uh, Zach is already getting criticism within the party for not focusing on green issues enough. Now, of course, his argument is that everybody knows it's sort of in the name, the Green Party. We do environmental issues at the heart of what we do. And I think he's right that if there has historically been an issue with the Green Party, uh a number of issues, the key one has been a lack of policy bandwidth. And really that is at the moment uh what Zach Polanski is really, really trying to push and expand across. Because there's a very key issue between being a political party that has emerged out of a social movement. In many ways, this is also the issue for reform and its predecessing arguments. There's an issue for any party that has emerged out of a social movement to redefine itself as a party ready for government. And that is very hard for insurgent parties to do. And I've done very well. I've not mentioned the P word so far, populist dimension, uh, which is, again, I think, in some ways, a very strategic, very clever, very bright, very smart dimension of the new green approach, also very dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

I think one of the things I was listening to a podcast, uh, the news agents podcast um interview with Zach Polansky. It was really good. Um, but you know, actually, a lot of this is really underpinned by the kinds of research and evidence that many of our scholars, Penn colleagues here at Sheffield, have been arguing for a long time. And particularly, I'm just reflecting on a piece of work I did in an area called Odsall, which is just on the outskirts of um Media City, Salford Keys. And um, at the time there was also an initiative called the Manchester Carbon Literacy Programme. And of course, the language of carbon literacy assumes that everyone else is illiterate, whilst the experts are literate, and therefore you teach some people about green stuff that they didn't know or care about. But the reality of lives in a place like Odsell is that actually people care, but they are struggling with a whole load of other things to do with meeting their basic needs. And I think actually something within this particular approach to dealing with where people are at, in order to explain why and how green politics and green approaches, whether that's housing, retrofit, food, matters so much.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

This is in the academic literature known as the Giddens paradox, that although many people accept it's a major existential challenge, still large sections of the public are reluctant to vote for meaningful policies that will address it. Now, what Zach Polansky is doing is quite fundamentally reframing the debate. He is basically reframing Green Party politics as about inequality and money and cost of living and the living day-to-day issues that affect people in Doncaster, Thorne, Mosborough, and all those local areas that people will pay attention.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Interesting. So, I mean, this brings us a bit to the P-word, I think. Um, and obviously it was interesting that in that interview he framed himself explicitly as a populist, which is quite rare. And he said, actually, Nigel Farage is not a populist, I am, basically. But uh, I mean, another P-word is personality, and it is clear that charisma and personality is playing a big part here. Um, we also had an interesting conversation with Katie Prashinski uh about um Zokan Man Dani. So I don't know if you've been following his career in New York, but similarly, it's the charisma, the ability to engage, um from but from a kind of very left-wing perspective. Um yeah, how much of this is about charismatic personalities and leadership?

SPEAKER_02 32:47

I think a lot of it is about charisma, and there's no doubt that charisma is an increasingly important part of politics, power. Now, there's no doubt at all that Zach Polansky has come into a party that arguably has lacked that X factor charisma, so he's getting a lot of attention. But I would just differentiate between what we might call charisma deep and charisma shallow. I mean, you know, you think about Barack Obama, charismatic, but also a deep understanding of the challenges of governing born through deep community action, which was his training ground. I think the danger we have in this world, which is linked to populism, is that it allows charisma shallow to get too much coverage. You want your party to be popular, not populist.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

I mean, um I know your your field is not necessarily thinking at the city-regional scale, but you have done a lot of work on multi-level governance. And I think one of the things we're interested in is how this might affect the city-regional level in the UK under the systems that we now have, and the kinds of people who might become city-regional mayors and what that might mean for wider politics. Because we've seen a lot of discussion, obviously, recently, about Andy Burnham, among other people, but around the world, we've seen often quite populist and charismatic figures rising from cities and national politics in really very significant ways. And do you think that's something that we might see play playing out more in the UK?

SPEAKER_02 34:15

I'm not getting a strong sense of that so far, because some of the people that you're you're thinking about, um, they've all been largely connected to what I would call the mainstream political parties. Now, that's not to say that they haven't developed an independence and often become a bit of a pain for the national party, but still the space for independence and those smaller parties at a local level, I think is difficult. And that's interesting because obviously you have more proportional electoral systems at that level. I also think you have to be very, very careful at thinking that what happens at a national level that gets far more media attention, far more buy-in, spin-out visibility will necessarily percolate down. I mean, I also think there's a big difference between, yes, okay, the English city region sphere is very, very different still to local city politics. So I would expect that the Green Party is enjoying a surge at the moment, but it's not so much generating that surge, it's developing that onward momentum, which is going to be the big challenge. The issue is how can local politics really galvanise those people who have been disillusioned, not interested, don't want to get involved in politics, the hard-to-reach communities. Um, that's always been a challenge, and it's a challenge at local government, and I would say it's a particular challenge in South Yorkshire.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Just before we get on to the local, I want to just pick up two follow-up questions around the city regional, because we've been thinking a bit on this podcast about scale jumping. And actually, like both Andy Burnham and now Andrea Jenkins, Borm-led city regional mayor in Greater Lincolnshire, sort of are city regional mayors in part because of a failure to succeed at a national level or the loss of a seat or whatever. And yet, certainly with Andy Burnham, there's a lot of speculation about him jumping back to Westminster to the national level. So there is actually not a fixity about the positions that people are holding and playing here. But I just wanted to ask you specifically about another P word, which is patriotism. Um, and just to invite you maybe to talk a bit about, because Zach Polanski said he is a patriot. This is the reclaiming of patriotism by the left in some ways, and that Nigel Farage is neither populist nor patriotic. Um, and this connects maybe with emotion and feeling. So I just, you know, how does this connect with your work?

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Okay, so uh it connects directly. What we can see across the party system at the moment is everybody trying to grab hold of the English patriotic dimension. Now, what's really interesting there, this is clearly a Farage effect which other parties are trying to catch up on. And it it does underpin the role of emotions and symbols and power and connectivity. And it does, you know, you mentioned the Sir Bernard Crick Centre. One of the things Sir Bernard Crick wrote a lot about, building upon Orwell, was the difference between patriotism and nationalism. Nothing wrong with being a patriot. Dangerous if you start to get into nationalism because that says we are better than everybody else. So there is a strange dynamic going on across the British political system at the moment, where all parties are essentially trying to claim the flag and also trying to claim a flag in ways which do not appear or are not immediately framed as meaning that they are related to the far right. I think for a long time, one of the issues driving large numbers of people to reform, and it's interesting now that as you say, the Green Party are moving into this space, was that certain topics were seen to be off limits. What we've now is moved on from that and all the parties sort of almost crashing in there to prove themselves.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

See, I just wanted to follow up on one thing that I don't want to lose sight of, and it is partly about this, the charisma and the emotions and the balancing act that Polansky is trying to strike, and that is about the green and how this lands locally. Because I'm just interested in your thoughts. If he's trying to pull some of those Farage supporting areas who are concerned about the cost of living, who will respond to a populist politics that speaks to their concerns, but he is a green politician for a reason. That is a very tricky balance to strike in the sense that a lot of the reform support has been built by building this idea that net zero, the the green revolution is against people's interests.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Sure. Absolutely critically important. Why is Zach different? He is different because he has criticized the mainstream parties for failing to understand why reformers suddenly burst through and he has got such an overwhelming lead, uh winning the leadership of the Green Party, because he is explicitly said if I am leader, I will understand and utilise emotions, emotional triggers, the storytelling, the role of nostalgia in British politics, because that is how we connect with large and big audiences. Now, in South Yorkshire, that is very, very interesting because we've had previously the development of reform and previous before that UKIP coming into areas of South Yorkshire with this coal industry nostalgia. Vote for us, we will bring back the coal industry. Can't bring back the steelworks, but you know, pushing back to an industrial past that they promised they could reclaim. What's the opportunity is for someone like Zach Polansky is to come into areas like South Yorkshire and explain how a focus on green politics, which as its heart has combating forms of inequality and how that can be linked to employment and growth around a green vision. But honestly and explicitly saying a return to the nostalgic heartlands of the past, major coal, steel production, etc., is not going to fly and they're lying to you.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

But he needs to find the emotional green argument. And I don't think he's done that yet, is my sense.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Yeah. I mean it's interesting just thinking about South Yorkshire and Sheffield a little bit further. And of course, we covered the reopening of the Orgreave inquiry um not so long ago on one of the podcasts. Because this does come down to place at a very fundamental level. And I'm going to maybe try and set reform to one side because the political landscape in Sheffield is actually being played out between the broad left-leaning parties, the Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. And at a surface level, this sometimes doesn't look like there's a huge amount to differentiate them because they're all broadly in the space of more local power and decentralisation, more funding to local government, some increased tax raising abilities, etc. But on some important issues, including green politics itself, there are some fundamental differences. So as we said at the beginning, Sheffield has had a no overall control for the last few years. And so that's meant that actually there has had to be quite a lot of coalition building between this left-leaning group of parties. There have been conflicts over things like Greenbelt, for instance. How much do you release it, or don't you release it at all? Over airports, obviously, an expansion, over questions to do with housing and retrofit. But I kind of want to pick up the point about community engagement with you, because the Greens are also known for a much stronger commitment to direct democracy and so citizens' assemblies and co-production and community engagement, whereas Labour has more of a kind of centralist structure that is more, yes, about strengthening accountability and increasing transparency and improving relations with communities, but not really relinquishing control in the same way. So is that fair? How do you think it plays out in Sheffield? How do you think like the differences, particularly around this question of community engagement, might unfold here?

SPEAKER_02 41:59

Gosh, well, I think you're absolutely right that the Labour Party have had a slightly more sort of big state top-down paternalist view of the public and what's good for them. The Greens coming in with a far more vibrant, theoretically bottom-up approach to organic citizen engagement, which in a sense is really, really obviously a key issue for Sheffield, given that the city in recent years has not attracted the best attention when it comes to, let's say, community relations. The city council at the moment pushing forward this uh fairly ambitious plan to develop uh nationally leading new frameworks for community engagement. Now, we have had many experiments in the city. I've seen various cycles of those experiments around particularly the use of citizens' assemblies. But the great danger here, and I think this is something that the Labour uh councillors have slightly failed to understand, is that the public aren't silly. The public very quickly see through uh tokenism or rhetoric, which is opposed to reality. I think there's also uh a cultural dimension here, though, which it which which does come up. And I think it makes it difficult to it in many ways goes back to the multi-level governance system. But I think also one of the challenges that we've had in Sheffield City Council is even though we've had large Labour groupings, although they've had to work in coalitions, I still get the impression that culturally there's a huge amount of fragmentation within the Labour group. I don't think, even though we've had a lot of uh, yes, it's pushed us towards consensus and coalition. I mean, I wouldn't want to kind of push this too hard, but have we seen a thrusting, innovative, confident city plan dynamic moving forward? Um uh we've got a big city plan now. It's got a lot of goals in there. Making those goals into a reality uh will be increasing. Incredibly challenging. Most city goals will have five or six so that you focus clearly on one area. My slight concern is that the city goals are spread very thin. And then you think about, you know, uh we've got a very good current leader of the council doing a very great job to manage in a very conflicted structure. But also we've got a wider picture where the government's the government's stated plans are very radical for local government. It will move all local authorities to a single model of an executive-based system. So Sheffield risks actually becoming very unique again, possibly for the wrong reasons, that we had the old committee-based system. We went under Tony Blair's reforms back to a executive model. Then we were, I think, the only city to have a local referendum to go back to a committee-based system. Now the government is going to push us back to an execution system. Oh my word. This is the flip-flop zigzag wish-wash, flippy-floppy that makes policy really tricky. But let me just say something else. You can't understand Sheffield City Council without understanding how it is therefore embedded and levers in between the dynamics and possibilities created by the South Yorkshire combined authority. Now, again, you know, um I I I I know, like, respect, admire the mayor a huge amount. But he's had a great challenge because for too long the constituent authorities of South Yorkshire were not, let's say, politely aligned. And those structural challenges at that level have affected then all the opportunities for the constituent city town councils. Now you compare that to place-based politics in Manchester, I think what you've had in Manchester is a different culture. It's not so much about institutions and structures, it's about going right back into the association of metrical and boroughs 30, 40 years. The Greater Manchester area for decades understood that even though they might be councils of different political hues, all councils within the same party that had very different views on what should be done, they all needed to work together informally to have that infrastructure. What that meant was when the regional mayor's initiative started, boom.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

And in a sense, it's made Annie Burnham's job not easy, but he's worked with institutions with long-term trust-based relationships for the greater good of Greater Manchester.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

But this comes back to not just the charisma of personality at an individual level, but the charisma and personality of place. Because Greater Manchester, again, going back to the 1980s, you know, has and before it's done so much work to narrate its story. It is the cotinopolis, it's the industrial revolution, it's the new future. You know, the the branding and the work there is so clever and precise in many ways. In Sheffield, we have a history in the 1980s of radical municipalism and bold experimentation that actually I think sometimes Sheffield still now struggles to own. It's like I feel I'm involved in many of the same processes as you, there's something really interesting that's trying to emerge here in Sheffield that is different from Manchester, from a place like Greater Manchester, but it hasn't got the confidence to quite yet come through. And I think that's fascinating. And so I think the green surge, if it emboldens that part of here locally, of the the personality of place, to claim its story of radical municipalism and to say that things could be done differently, we could see something very interesting. But I want to pick up with you. How do we then think back from Sheffield kind of radical history, like the attachment to mining and stories, like emotion and place, like the no overall control of the city council to what might be going on then in the future in Westminster? I mean, do you think that there are things there from Sheffield's stories of coalition building, collaboration, the flip-flop, wishy-washy sort of politics of structure and the politics of culture and pride in place that is going to inform what kind of national politics we see in the future.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

Well, do you know what? I might I might go and join the Green Party after this one, because I think actually, you know, if we were to sort of play with this, okay, what might Zack say to Sheffield?

SPEAKER_00 48:14

I know. I want to get him here. This is going to come in out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 48:18

Because it was a city where they were at one point thought we were most likely to get.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

We're going to do a crossover with Zack's pod at some point.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Well, that'll be good. Zach would say what many other people would say and have said for a fairly long time, is maybe what the Green Surge could do in Sheffield is deliver that key, simple, brandaware story, what makes Sheffield special? What's the USP? In exactly the way that you said uh Manchester have done it and very other parts of the the UK have done it. And it has to be a story that forms a f a kind of emotional glue that resonates with all communities. Because the great danger we're in nationally is that we're currently at a situation that risks extreme polarization. Reform, pull away, take the Conservative Party, destroy it, have a right to the right of the spectrum, and now we've got the Green Party, um Zach Polansky, left-wing eco-populism risk pushing it far to the left. And we'll end up with these two massive opposing polls. The interesting thing for Sheffield may well be okay, what can Sheffield grab as its USP? And in that regard, I think there is a huge and proud history and story to tell. But also the obvious, obvious narrative for the Green Party in Sheffield and for Sheffield globally, is to push this outdoor city green narrative. Where are we? On the edge of the peaks. People come from all over the world to enjoy the countryside and our parks. And for me, that is the hook on which we should hang a lot more.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

I don't know about joining the party, Matt. It sounds like you're standing for leadership.

SPEAKER_00 50:05

Oh, I I was gonna put him in like the tourist board at that moment in time. Oh, hold on, the tourist board. I've been I think it's a good version.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

I can't I can I just can't let this go. Just one thing, and I hate to be we're we're trying to be really positive and we've got to stay positive. Um we don't. Okay, so let's just be honest. My understanding and analysis of where things stand for next council elections in Sheffield are not going to see a big shift necessarily to the Greens. We're gonna see a big shift breakthrough of reform.

SPEAKER_01 50:34

They're around, they're going to local meetings all over the city, bringing their flags, up, trying to creating protests, disrupting community meetings, reform all over the city.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

But I just also want to come back to one thing you sort of said. Well, what was AC would do was create a populist narrative. But when we've also talked about not being populist but popular, I would say a lot of this is evidence-based. You know, when you look at the literature on the just transition, when you look at the literature on community engagement, and that's why it's actually very fascinating to think about the relationship between populism, popularity, and evidence in this whole post-truth world that we keep talking about. There's a really interesting merge going on in the language, rhetoric, and politics of the Green Party at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 51:10

And there is a massive role for academics at the University of Sheffield and more broadly to play a role in public debate in order to push through and translate that evidence base to combat misinformation and to play a role in trying to nurture and cultivate different debates and different audiences in different ways.

SPEAKER_00 51:32

Yeah, and I hope this podcast is part of that. So I think we're gonna have to wrap up, but thank you, Matt. I think we say this to everyone, but we're gonna have to get you back on for more of a chat about this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 51:42

Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you very much, Matt. Thank you for having me. Okay, so for our second dive, we are joined by Saeed Zane. Um Saeed, who uh is in the final stages of his PhD here at the University of Sheffield. Uh his PhD, which focuses on humanitarian aid, socio-spatial dynamics, and the evolution of refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. We've mentioned in previous episodes that we wanted to get some real expertise on Gaza on the podcast, and now we have it. So it's wonderful to be joined by you Saeed. Um his work, his research particularly focuses on the experience of two specific camps in Gaza, Jabalia and Der Albalha. And it examines how protracted displacement and prolonged humanitarian intervention has shaped the living conditions and urban spaces in the refugee camps in Gaza, right from their very formation until 2023, after which, obviously, uh so much of the strip has been devastated by relentless Israeli bombardment. Saeed also has an MSE in uh management and implementation of development projects from the University of Manchester, in which I think he won an award for best dissertation. Congratulations. Congratulations. And before his PhD, he has more than 10 years of experience working in humanitarian and development projects in the Gaza Strip, including working as a Cash and Livelihoods Programme Manager for Mercy Corps and a technical officer in the Norwegian Refugee Council. Um he's also currently working for the Welfare Association, which is a UK registered charity supporting transformative development and humanitarian projects and interventions to empower and benefit Palestinian communities in the West Bank Gaza and also Lebanon. So welcome, Saeed. We're so happy to have you on. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 53:31

Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Beth. I'm very happy to be with you on this wonderful podcast. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

So uh just so that um our audience is aware, I think we're you we're gonna be talking quite a bit about your work and you and your research, but at a time which is obviously still incredibly uncertain for for you and your family and for all Palestinians, um, despite the recent ceasefire. And uh we know how hard it's been for you to write about the history of Gaza and its camps at this time. And today we want to mostly focus not so much on the war and its consequences, but on the period before that, which you were researching, uh, and the longer history of the Gaza Strip and the camps there. But of course, we will also think about the implications of your research for Gaza today and its future. So I wonder if you could begin by just telling us a little about your overall research topic, uh uh what you wanted to explore and and why you chose this particular topic.

SPEAKER_06 54:23

Uh yeah, thank you, Tom. Um actually my research topic focuses on uh trying to understand the evolution process of refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and how uh this process has been affected by the prolonged provision of humanitarian aid interventions. Uh basically, as you know, like the CAD started to establish in 1948 and they evolved uh uh throughout uh many decades of their existence under the management of humanitarian aid organizations. Uh actually what what interested me in these camps is uh uh like twofolds. Uh the first thing is uh I am uh as as you told you mentioned, Tom, I'm a humanitarian aid worker originally working in Gaza, and I have been exposed to these camps and uh doing humanitarian work there and have seen these camps has how these camps have changed, and uh I'm trying to understand what is the longer-term impact of humanitarian interventions that are supposed to be short-term on uh uh the evolution process and the built environment of these camps. Uh the second thing, I I am from Gaza, so I I lived there and had very interactions with uh B Bol and the camp environment there, where I had uh friends and uh attended uh cultural events, uh did uh uh like economic activities and shopping and have been going uh to uh a camp where I lived like in a town next to a big camp Jabalia, where I I am studying now. So I'm trying to understand how the cab environment has evolved throughout time and what uh has been the impact of humanitarian aid uh intervention on uh this evolution process?

SPEAKER_01 56:03

Okay, excellent. So this this focus on the humanitarian support and its role in producing the camps is is obviously highly relevant to the present day, but also probably not something many people know that much about. So, how would you characterize the role of those humanitarian actors of different kinds? I mean, who are they? And and would you has their role been positive, negative? How do we understand their role in relation to how those camps ended up being for people?

SPEAKER_06 56:27

Uh actually, yes, it's it's kind of uh a controversial question. And uh these like humanitarian aid is like you know, Gaza is uh uh a rich environment for humanitarian uh action, and there has been lots of humanitarian actors uh uh coming in, providing services. But uh the main agency that works there is uh the ONURO, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency. And uh the UNRWA has been overseeing the the camp and the development of refugees uh in Gaza and uh the Levant countries like uh Syria, Lebanon, uh Jordan, as uh also the West Bank. So the Ruff Humanitarian actors mainly was focused on the provision of temporary humanitarian assistance, which is like their mandate. But in uh chronic, uh protracted displacement, there are other needs that arise uh from the camp environment which are similar to city needs, like camps developed into a neighborhood of their adjacent cities, and uh the the humanitarian actors have been like uh uh like challenged by this evolution and trying to provide a kind of like developmental interventions while they have temporary mandate at the same time. So it has been challenging for those actors, uh particularly those with shorter-term humanitarian mandate, uh, and the fluctuation of the context where like there are like acute emergencies and shift to development and then acute emergencies, which also impacted how these uh actors operate on the ground.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

You talk there about the temporary initial nature of these camps, but then also chronic long-term displacement. And I think one of the things you do in your work is explore this relationship over time, which is really important, but also the relationship between the camp and the non-camp urban areas. And for many people, when we think about refugee camps, you know, you have this image of tents or shacks, of impermanence, of temporary shelters on the edges of cities or even in rural areas. But in Gaza, the camps have looked very different for much of their history. So could you say a bit more about how have camps become urban in Gaza and what has that meant for people living there?

SPEAKER_06 58:47

Uh yeah. Uh this is the the the like one of the main focus on my research is to understand the relationship between the camp and the non-camp areas. Uh actually, like uh uh frankly speaking, the camps in the Gaza are part of the urban fabric. So uh it's true that they are established as tents uh to host refugees, but you know, refugees in in the Gaza Strip are part of that social fabric of the non-refugee population and they share uh same uh social and political identities. So there has been kind of integration between the non-refugees and non-refugees, which reflected also on uh the evolution and integration of the urban environment where camps evolved uh throughout the development of the cities in the Gaza Strip. So camps are uh not located, for example, in in peripheries that are like disconnected from uh the main cities of Gaza. Uh on the contrary, camps are connected to the cities and uh they developed uh using like, for example, the building in the built environment has been built using the same, the same or similar uh building material that has been used to build the cities. And the expertise of building the cities has been transferred to the camp and vice versa. So you can see camps has evolved uh throughout time to resemble cities in Gaza. However, uh there has been no regulatory environment that or regulation that governs the evolution of these camps. So you can see uh the camps evolution were like governed mostly by customary interactions between refugees themselves. So you can see very tiny alleyways, uh uh like uh you can see also uh inconsistence of building, you can see high-rise building well established next to miserable shelters with substandard shelters. You can see uh uh uh these interactions and spot them uh immediately when you go to the camp because uh the camp uh like evolved what we l in a term what we call it like under temporary permanent conditions, and they were uh uh like built uh to to cater for uh a rising need from refugees, not uh in a bland or organized matter. And this uh has caused like uh many issues inside the camp, losing uh like uh very high like very high density, uh overcrowding conditions, uh substandard shelters, uh lack of access to services, uh because this and through this long period the camp space has been confined or like limited, but refugees had to evolve vertically and uh uh squat over like the uh uh the urban spaces and the roads. So there has been like uh a relationship between uh like how the camp evolved and non-camp areas, which has been like kind of like similar development, but the non-camp areas has been regulated by the authorities there, but uh there has been no authorities there to regulate the built environment in the camp. So this has created problems for the camps.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:59

Because there isn't, from what you're saying, this hard edge even between camp and non-camp. It is a fuzzy edge. And I um was uh reading some of the an extract from your PhD, and you know, and there's this really moving part where you're talking about your own experiences of moving between. And so you have you're not sort of clearly defined that you can or cannot go. There's not a moment you enter and you leave.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:21

Of course. It's part of the urban fabric. So it's it's connected. So you cannot like if you go there, you cannot spot uh uh a barrier or you can say this is like where the camp ends and where the city starts. It's kind of intangible. Even like the camp and city, uh and in official map they say is share the same roads or share same streets. So uh it's kind of like a community like that evolved together, like between the camp and non-camp areas. And uh uh the issue is like uh uh was uh mainly who should you regulate these camps or who should regulate the built environment in the camp, which no, no, no, no single entity like intervened and provided like uh uh governing regulations for the camp environment. However, as you mentioned, the the the camp and the non-camp area are intangent, interwoven in the Gaza Strip, and uh they like together form uh like a uh common urban fabric for the Gaza Strip.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:21

I mean I want to come back to this question about governance as well. But obviously, even if the boundary is blurred, inhabitants, residents themselves reside somewhere. Yes. They have a kind of fixed point. And Gaza is a dense urban space, so there's this fluidity, but at the same time, people living in the camp or out of the camp. So I was just wondering if you could say a bit more about you know, maybe there are some advantages or disadvantages of being in one area than the other that we might not expect. Because you might, from an uninformed by your research perspective, you might think life in the camp bad, life out of the camp good. You know, we we like have these sorts of binary categories. We were talking about this a bit uh last feature as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:58

But so just say one of the things that's really striking that comes through in your work is how economically dynamic the camps are compared to the surrounding urban areas, which is the opposite of often what people would would expect.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:07

Exactly. Yeah, so could you elaborate on those sorts of binaries?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:11

Uh uh it's it's uh it's kind of complex like to to uh to judge like if living in the camp or out of the camp for refugees is uh the ideal situation in the Gaza Strip. Uh from like the perspectives of refugees I've interviewed, they are attached to the camp. They feel the intimacy and the social connection because they have uh re-established their social networks within the camp. They have established their solidarity and support through uh their their uh like the other refugees who were displaced at the same time. And there you can feel there's a social cohesion inside the camp. Uh and as you mentioned, Tom, like there there's also the economic part of uh being in the camp, like the camp is a dense area with uh uh it has been like uh one of the like for example Jebele camp was uh one of the active economic centers in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip due to density to its central location where it like many people from different towns and villages come to the camp. So it it it resembles like a uh downtown for many of those who were living in the north area. So uh on the other side, like uh the the the area itself, the space of the shelters is confined and people need to expand because it has been like a chronic displacement situation where families extend and they needed more space, they needed more houses, so they had to move outside the camp and live outside the camp. So it's kind of like uh uh related to the personal circumstances of that particular refugee family who decide either to stay in the camp because of the social network or social connection, or if they want to uh have the financial capacity to extend uh live outside the camp. And there are also pros and cons for every kind of scenario.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

But you've learned a lot about the problems of having different spatial governance regimes and regulatory regimes in close proximity in conflict and post-conflict situations. So, what do you think might be some of the most important lessons from your research going forward?

SPEAKER_06 1:06:14

Yeah, uh actually like uh the in and protracted displacement, uh I suggest in my research to introduce kind of uh regulatory or gav governance structure that can regulate uh the evolution of camps as long as refugees are remaining. Because leaving uh the camps to be uh uh like uh evolved through customary rules and uh improvisation will uh result in uh deteriorated infrastructure with what pressure on the environment as we we we clarified and will also uh uh create social problems from overcrowding and lack of access to services. Uh uh having uh like in my study I highlight the role of different actors, including like the refugees' popular committee, the municipalities, uh the owner white self, and uh local governing authorities who has been interacting in a technical way to manage the camp space, but there has been always uh a kind of vacancy in who uh uh puts, for example, the building codes, who governs uh uh uh the design of the streets and who uh uh governs the how refugees should build or uh uh uh expand. Uh it's a kind of like uh if things are left uh uh like in in vacancy, I think uh the the issue of overcrowding and density uh over over density will also impact the camps and uh deteriorate the living conditions of people, who dwell in these areas.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:54

I mean I think uh may maybe we we should finish by going back to the role of of UNRWA, the um United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. Um because it has been so central, but also it's been very controversial. And as people might know, the US uh Trump administration and Israel have attacked the organization, accused it of having terrorist links, and are trying to defund it and kind of remove it, erase it from the future of Gaza. I mean, how do you see, based on your research, the role of of UNRWA the role that it might play in the future and what how important it might be and what risks there might be for it not being involved?

SPEAKER_06 1:08:29

Yeah, this is a critical question, actually. Uh look, if UNRWA uh manages to retain its operations, it would have a significant role in the reconstruction uh and the building of uh camps or uh uh the recovery of the overall Gaza step. Uh let's not forget that OnRa is not only operating in Gaza. It operates in the West Bank, in uh Jordan, in uh Lebanon and in Syria and it provides services for more than uh five million Palestinian refugees. So uh the role of the UNRWA is central in uh the issue of Palestinian refugees in general. Uh in particular in the Gaza Strip, uh the UNRWA uh employs thousands of staff and has uh the biggest humanitarian operation on the ground, uh providing food, uh water, healthcare, uh education support to refugees in the Gaza Strip. Uh and I think most of the countries still recognize this role. Like and uh there has been ongoing support uh from countries in Europe, from the UK, from Australia, from Canada, uh, and uh there are there are multi-year commitments to funding UNORWA uh because they recognize how important the role of this agency in uh the recovery process for Palestinian refugees, particularly in Gaza. So the UNORA uh has uh longstanding uh expertise in service uh provision, humanitarian uh service provision as well as development of Palestinian refugees. Particularly if you look at uh the education sector, the UNRWA is uh the main uh education provider for primary schools for in the Gaza Strip. If you look at uh the health sector, the Honorwa has been the uh the main uh provider for primary health care uh for maternity, for uh elderly people with chronic diseases. So uh the agency has kind of this kind of expertise and connection with the Palestinian community that can help in the recovery. Uh in the future prospects, the Honorwa uh uh has piloted uh uh the infrastructure and camp improvement program in the Gaza Strait before uh 2023. And uh the agency learned how to do uh bottom-up planning uh through engaging with communities uh of refugees, with their representatives and uh uh the local authorities. Uh this technical role can be taken as a lessons learned from honorable experience to build on how to rebuild these communities. Uh rebuilding these communities is not about uh building the infrastructure or building just like uh the buildings. It's about recreating the aspects of urban life, allowing people to access education, uh healthcare, uh recovery of the social fabric itself that has been scattered due to this like destruction of the camps. And uh uh the the important uh role that Honorwa has played in also engaging with the civil society uh organizations uh of refugees, like establishing the women's centers, for example, cultural centers, sports centers, all these services have been provided by the Honorwa. It's like a catalyst. Uh the ONRRWA has been the catalyst or the main provider of uh the urban life for refugees. And uh I think the Honorwa can play a significant role in this regard uh if a reconstruction happened and the honorwa remains in operation.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:00

I was just thinking about your work with the welfare association and you know Tom introduced at the beginning as also working with Palestinian communities in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon. I was gonna ask you a question about the role of communities themselves in peace, rebuilding, in um reconstruction. Um I was thinking about that because you know we had Simon Rushton on who was talking about local territorial peace building processes in Colombia. We've been talking about Zach Polansky, who was sort of arguing that communities need to find solutions themselves. But then just listening to you, I was thinking because of the complete devastation, I guess, of the fabric of civil society. I mean, is it the case that the top-down in this instance through UNRWA has to come first? So that the kind of urban life you're talking about can be rebuilt, and then there may be sufficient community agency, community-based organizations that can maybe mobilize and organize themselves?

SPEAKER_06 1:12:58

Yeah, uh I'm quite recent with the Welfare Association, but like from my experience in Gaza, I believe there has been always an active uh civil society organizations, even during this devastation, it still plays a significant role in creating like social cohesion and preserving the internal peace within uh the community. So uh I think uh and uh uh from what I've I have seen from like the coordination structures on the ground that the civil society, the Palestinian civil society organizations still engaged, like the Palestinian NGOs uh and their networks still engaged with the Hermitera and Development actors. And uh they feed the like the like uh the the efforts with information from the ground, with uh uh efforts on the ground because they have access to communities as well. And they can reflect what is needed and what is not needed. So I believe it's central to have uh uh like civil society organizations and Palestinian NGOs engaged in uh the recovery and reconstruction process, even though like uh some plans could come at a higher level, but I think uh uh uh a bottom-up approach or feedback would be instrumental in this regard to build or to reconstruct uh a place that can be inhabited by uh refugees and uh uh with dignity and uh that can cater for their needs that can be transferred or like uh cascaded through uh the existence of active civil society organizations.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:27

Said, thank you so much. I think we're gonna have to wrap up. There there is so much more we could ask you about, but we we we ought to stop. But we it's been really amazing to have you. It's such a opportunity to have this expertise from the ground. And yes, thank you. Thank you, Tom and Beth. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:43

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:56

So after conversations like that one we've had with Saeed and talking about those kinds of situations, I always feel very frivolous about some of the things discussed on my radar because you know, some of the things we go into. But I I I think I mean I was really this the the the some of the things I was talking about earlier in terms of the kind of capitalist speculation that's happening through the production, large-scale production of temporarily distracting bits of rubbish. I mean, I feel like this is part of the same story where we're seeing so much money and effort go into two things. Well, on the one hand, into defense and into arms, and that's something that okay, there's a reason for that in the world that we're in. But then we're also seeing these insane amounts of money being spent on slop and on things that people don't need. And the money for to meet people's needs, going towards improving people's lives, both in the UK in the UK and internationally, seems to be vanishing. This idea that you wouldn't fund something like UNWA, which has been providing all these services that matter to people's lives in Gaza. And yet I heard about OpenAI was planning to spend three trillion dollars on chips to try and boost its compute in order to be able to meet some abstract ideal of AGI in the future. I mean, I feel like there is a connection between a lot of the things we talk about, like what is going on when the most basic human humanity is not is not funded? Because one of the big questions about the future of Gaza, and we didn't get into this for me, is where is the money going to come? There is no money. Like lots of many of the international humanitarian organizations have had their funding radically cut.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:27

That's true. I mean, Zach Polanski would say tax the rich, because I mean in the podcast we all obviously listened to.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:32

Um, he was talking about his identity as a Jewish gay man and like one of the most difficult things having flack for his position. Um but he was also saying, well, I'm accused of being idealistic, but there is enough money to do the things we need to do to live responsibly and well on the planet with other species if we think differently about our global capitalist system, who has money and where it needs to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:54

I know. I was I was gonna say earlier on, and I didn't say it, when I was talking about the um the AI friend piece, that it reminded me this this kind of wild capitalist speculation about these imagined futures that all this money is going into. It reminded me of the End of the Back to the Future where Doc Brown discovers that you can fuel the DeLorean with rubbish and you don't need plutonium. I didn't mention that I think the story seems even more relevant to me because there's something about plutonium and rubbish as the things fueling our global economy, where we're just seeing these appalling human outcomes all over the place. And I I mean it is disturbing. So my only point, really thinking and linking that to Matt's piece on the Greens, is that we do need charismatic leaders with radical agendas. Like we need new stories that are green stories or that are human, social progressive stories, because we're not hearing them enough. And I'm not saying that necessarily that's going to happen out of this you know surge we're seeing in the greens, but it feels so important.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:45

But it is that kind of like battle for hearts and minds, the the narratives and the counter-narratives that we were talking about with Matt that are so important to shift that window of opportunity, but also the window, the window of discourse, like the way things get framed. You know, I was thinking about uh uh another piece I read um preparing for this dive, like about Rafa being called a humanitarian city. But I mean, this is just another camp, but the word city somehow is seen to sanitize the construction of a holding pen for humans. I mean, that's what was being put forward at that moment in time. So I mean, I think there is this real sense that we need this counter-narrative of the urban, which we've talked about before. I think what I really took from Said's dive was the connection with this idea of the edge and the boundaries and how we define things and what does it mean to be living not only as humans but as a wide variety of species in these blurry edges. And of course, at the keynote that we had with the Urban Institute with Abdimonique Simone on Monday last week, we were talking about the edge and how it defines what it means to live upon the planet. I was also thinking in relation to Saeed's dive about kind of this who and where do efforts to rebuild come from. In fact, we talked a bit about this in relation to Ukraine and decentralisation, but we also talked about this with Cathy in Sudan. And you know, actually it felt like in some way civil society was being destroyed, but it also survived in very important ways through these emergency response rooms, which you know are being recognised globally now for their humanitarian um relief and humanitarian role. So civil society does survive. And I think that point about like the relationship between international agencies, local community development processes, and how you build the capacity to build legitimate peace-building processes from below is just so critical.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:26

I think you're absolutely right, actually. And I in even the point I was making about the importance of charismatic leadership, partly because we know that good technocratic leadership is not enough when we need to make big decisions that are kind of radical about the reallocation of resources. It is so important not to just depend on charismatic leadership because there are so many risks with it, and to actually hold that capacity for civil society to be shaping the agendas to come. I mean, that's actually the most important thing as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:48

It's the most important thing. But I mean, as we're going to discuss just looking forward in our next feature, it's not always the case that civil society is centred in some of the global discourses. So just looking ahead to our next feature, which is going to be coming out on the global infrastructure race. Um, this is going to be a conversation between two of our sort of research projects about the impacts of Chinese foreign direct investment, infrastructure investments across the world, and actually how these big global projects are really fundamentally shaping some of these inequalities in place in different urban communities. So watch out for that, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:21

We're going to have to wrap up now. So thank you very much for listening. Hope you enjoyed it and tune in next time to get that feature on urban radar.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:27

Absolutely. Goodbye.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:29

Bye.