I don’t listen to many podcasts, but I started listening to one recently called “Beneath the Surface” from Stripe Press. The podcast is all about infrastructure, and the first episode is about “new cities” or “charter cities,” that is, “new urban developments built almost from scratch through financial investment and political will.”

Here’s the episode description: 

Each year, tens of millions of people migrate from rural areas to cities—mostly in emerging economies, where populations are growing faster than governments can create basic infrastructure. To address the challenges of urbanization without industrialization, development experts, economists, and policymakers have proposed solutions spanning from increased immigration to better family planning.

In this episode, we ask: could charter cities—a model inspired by the successes of places like Singapore and Shenzhen—be a path to accelerating growth in emerging economies?

The actually sustainable ideas about city-building really show up in the last 10 minutes of the episode, but the whole thing was interesting to hear, especially about the development of Nkwashi in Zambia.

Find the podcast here.