On 27th June we celebrate the UN’s Micro, Small and Medium sized Enterprises (MSME) Day. According to data provided by the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), MSMEs make up over 90% of all firms and account, on average, for 70% of total employment and 50% of GDP. They are the heart of our economies and our communities, providing employment and much needed services. ...
Saturday 27th June is the UN’s Micro, Small and Medium sized Enterprises (MSME) Day. Small businesses are the heart of any economy. That’s especially true in Southeast Asia, where millions of people rely on work in the informal employment, daily wage and micro enterprise sectors. ...
With Malaysia experiencing record high numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, the country is entering an extended period of social and economic lockdowns aimed at curtailing and controlling the spread of the disease. As Malaysians embrace living, working and socialising from home once again, we speak to Mary Carty, a strategic consultant, and mentor is one of the founders of AwakenHub, a networking platform and resource centre for female entrepreneurs in Ireland and across the Irish diaspora. ...
This week the Reflexive City has the great pleasure of talking to a heritage conservation expert who has been instrumental in setting up the Think City Institute. A former UNESCO Regional Advisor for Culture for Asia and the Pacific, thought leader Dr Richard Engelhardt has been an adviser and consultant to Think City for the last 10 years. ...
Last week saw the launch of the KISAH Futures Anthology, a collection of the 50 winning short story entries in Think City’s storytelling competition in association with UNDP Accelerator Labs,...
With Malaysia’s Covid-19 vaccination scheme due to start in March, Matt and Maya look at some of difficulties that other countries have faced in their efforts to vaccinate the homeless. We speak to Aishwariya Krishna Kumar from Think’s City’s social resilience team about Think City’s programmes for people experiencing homelessness, its homelessness Registry Week Report and its involvement in NGOhub’s Homeless Services Registry. ...
Apps like Clubhouse celebrate innovation and the innovators while overlooking the vast army of maintainers that allow those systems to run. Programmes like Think City’s K2K Aktif Bersama are trying to change that conversation, focus on the people and the communities we all rely on to keep the world moving. ...
Research has shown that singing can reduce anxiety, enhance mood, improve mental health and quality of life. Building on this knowledge, Think City has partnered with Karyawan, impacted by Covid-19 themselves, and Perwacom, a local NGO, to deliver this intervention of a different kind....
As Malaysia undergoes its second major movement control order, Think City has released its first Malaysia Business Community Pulse Check Report, conducted in the third quarter of 2020. Focusing on the downtown areas of Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru and George Town, the survey was designed to develop an understanding of the market conditions that business operators have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic...
This week we’re continuing the work-based theme and discuss the Malaysia Business Community Pulse Check Report, the result of a Think City Survey. An overview of the community-level effects of COVID-19 on individual Malaysian businesses in 2020, we speak to one of the report’s analysts, Joel Goh, senior manager and data specialist at Think City, about the report, its findings and its future. ...
Once offered as a perk, remote working is increasingly being looked at by companies as a way to boost employee wellbeing, to increase productivity and to potentially reduce costs. Which raises an interesting question for cities: if people no longer have to live where they work, what will cities have to offer to retain or attract them? The Citymaker speaks to strategist, speaker and writer Lauren Razavi, a future work specialist and experienced nomad about global natives and the future of the work from anywhere movement. ...
On this week’s Reflexive City we have an exclusive interview with legendary Malaysian writer and filmmaker Amir Muhammad about his role in the UNDP, MIGHT, Universiti Malaya and Think City...
The Citymaker speaks to citymakers Charlot Schans and Siënna Veelders, advisors at Dutch urban development bureau STIPO about their vision for placemaking in a post-pandemic world and their roles as co-curators of The City at Eye Level Asia, a new book showcasing some of the most creative approaches to creating liveable and lovable cities in South East Asia....
In the second in a series of three 2021-based shows, this week we’re looking at the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination programmes and the uncertainty surrounding them and asking how we can rebuild public trust, not only in vaccines but in public institutions in general. ...
As we continue to grapple with the uncertainty of 2020, the idea of what 2021 has in store may be too exhausting to contemplate. Bleak as it may seem, there are bright spots on the horizon. ...
The world has been tried and tested in 2020. What we do in 2021 may determine how we bounce back, and who will benefit the most....
On this week’s show, Matt and Maya compare the pandemic to the Y2K Bug in terms of preparedness and cooperation as they look at a year of remarkable resilience on...
It’s been a minute. If there’s one phrase that perfectly sums up 2020, that could be it. A year that has seemed both endless and fleeting. We’ve drifted through it in a blur of groundhog days punctuated by fear and uncertainty. For those of us fortunate enough to have kept our jobs, or found new ones, and have been able to work from home, the last vestiges of work-life balance have probably disappeared. ...
For the past few weeks we’ve been focusing on sustainable urbanisation as outlined in the World Cities Report 2020, launched by UN-Habitat at the end of October. The Citymaker spoke to one of the report’s early contributors, Think City’s Programme Director, Dr Matt Benson, about the urgent need for cities to be more reflexive and to cope with the pandemics and shocks that are expected in the future. ...
As we head Into the final month of this strange year, we’re changing up the format of the next few shows to bring you some of the major stories that have marked or Inspired us this year. This week, the role that new working practices have played in keeping us safe from the coronavirus in 2020, and how those same safeguards may be used against us in the future....
Why do we behave like noisy neighbours online? The solution is a radical one: that we make the digital world more like the physical one. That we slow it down and introduce friction....
In a world that is becoming depressingly accustomed to shocks, 2020 stands as an outlier....
Around the globe, over a million people per week move into urban areas. This level of growth presents enormous challenges for governing agencies who struggle with the capacity and finance to meet the growing demand for infrastructure and services. ...
We speak to Dr Matt Benson, Think City’s programme Director about the Penang Bay International Ideas Competition and take a look at Sällbo, a Swedish experiment in multigenerational living and...