Tag: corruption
-
Book review: Global Finance, Local Control – by Igor Logvinenko
I love book reviews. I love reading them and I love writing them. Reading them is great – in a world where so much amazing research is published every day, it seems impossible to keep up. But book reviews help make that work easier. Frankly I wish ordinary academic articles would have a digest like…
-
A quick example of pernicious Russophobia
I’ve been attacked from all sides for making comments about contemporary Russia and Russian politics. I’ve been told that I’m in the pocket of Putin, or at the very least a naive “useful idiot”. Simultaneously, that same comment led others to tell me that I am Russophobic, a blind westerner who does not understand anything,…
-
File under: clever strategies to skim a little off the top
Kirill Bezrukov (@KBezrukov) pointed me to this beautiful example of savvy business in Kaliningrad. There’s a bridge (Vysokiy Most, or High Bridge) that connects the main parts of Kaliningrad to Oktyabrskiy Ostrov, a quirky, mostly undeveloped island in the middle of the city. Among other things, the city’s World Cup development agenda involves transforming this…
-
A trashy kind of Olympic legacy
In preparation for my talk at this year’s American Association of Geographers annual conference I’ve been thinking about Sochi several years after the Olympics. I think it’s worth taking a look at the city after the circus has left town, when the international spotlight has largely moved on to other events and other places. Sochi…