About
Hi there, I’m Arindam, and this is my website.
A little bit about me: I am an economist, working in the urban sector, specifically developing analytical frameworks to understand different forms of spatial inequalities within cities. Having worked for close to two decades as a researcher across the private sector, and policy/academic circles, I recently buckled down, and worked through a PhD. Now (insert eye-roll) I’m back to working as a researcher mostly in policy/academic circles, with greatly reduced private sector dalliance.
My main interest is in understanding different forms and scales of spatial inequalities. In my doctoral research, I distilled a lot of my observations and experiences of working with urban practitioners into developing an analytical framework that looks at spatial inequality as the inequality between spaces, as a contrast to existing approaches that look at the inequalities between people in different spaces. The end result was, in essence, a spatialised reading of the Capabilities Approach—see here for an interactive dashboard that explains the mechanics of the framework further.
My current research sits across three areas, and connects them back to my broader interest in spatial inequalities. First, the mechanics of wealth creation and accumulation. Second, the implications of different forms of economic transitions on urban morphology. And third, the data and information ecosystems that are used to make spatial decisions in cities.
In the (wealth creation and accumulation × spatial inequalities) thread, I am looking at the dynamics of realised gains in housing assets, and whether this can be leveraged towards designing effective policy instruments to create wealth in the left-tail of the population/wealth distribution.
In the (economic transitions × spatial inequalities) thread, I am exploring the implications of how settlements change over time, in both form and function, on different forms of spatial inequalities across different scales of analysis.
In the (data ecosystems × spatial inequalities) thread, I am trying to study the mismatch between data/information needs at the city level, and data/information being produced by NSOs, and their implications on spatial decision-making in cities.
All three streams are currently sited either in the African context, with a focus on Southern Africa, or in India. But this is primarily driven by funding considerations. As a rule, I am always on the lookout for collaborations beyond, particularly in the global South.
My current(-ish) CV is available here.
I also try to have a life outside of work, even though the last few years of PhD-ing and CapeTown-ing have taken a toll on these endeavours. Most notably, I love quizzing (used to host a regular drinks+quiz event back in Bangalore), am a certified carpenter (without his tools at the moment), and an okay artist (mostly watercolour and pencils). I also enjoy running chemistry experiments in the kitchen (only started understanding organic chemistry when I started cooking—hated it in school), and single grain whiskeys.
As this website is populated, the portfolio page will have links to my publications and other public-facing things that I produce. The interactives section currently houses (and will house) various simulators and interactive dashboards that I develop(ed) in the sidelines of ongoing projects. And then the blog, which I intend to keep active this time round, hopefully updating at least twice a month.