Global Urbanisms, Regional Specificities

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There is a very active debate in urban studies at the moment, exploring the limits of universalist theorisations of the urban while at the same time seeking to engage with the globalisation of urban processes. Drawing on many different strands of theoretical inspiration, urban scholars are concerned to build wider knowledges about the urban across the very great diversity of urban outcomes around the world. It is a time of some theoretical ferment in the field, and the UCL Urban Laboratory has hosted a series of events to address these themes; it is evident that there are many UCL urban scholars contributing to these debates.

There is a close synergy between these concerns and those raised by UCL's Institute of Advanced Studies, which provides a home to the collective 'area studies' research groupings at UCL but seeks to open the historical configurations of region and place to question under the rubric Area Studies Re-Mapped or 'Area Studies without Borders'. We felt that there was a strong shared interest in building theoretical insights from the rich experiences of specific regions and distinctive cities, while being alert to how these experiences are shaped by wider processes of globalisation. Conceptualisation, then, need to navigate these trajectories of connection and differentiation.

Spaces are limited and must be booked via Eventbrite: globalurbanisms.eventbrite.co.uk.

Public sessions:

Monday 16 May, 17.00 - 20.00: Regional Perspectives on Planetary Urbanisation

• Pushpa Arabindoo (Regional Specificity and Planetary Urbanisation): TBC
• Tariq Jazeel (Translation and Post-colonialism): TBC
• Debby Potts (African perspectives on Planetary Urbanisation): Thinking through planetary urbanism as a regional geographer: perspectives from history and livelihood studies in rural and urban Africa
• Christian Schmid (Sociology, Architecture, ETH Zurich): Comparative Investigations of Planetary Urbanisation

Tuesday 17 May, 18.00 - 20.00: Thinking (the urban) with the Global South

• AbdouMaliq Simone: What has happened to the black city?
• Fulong Wu: Emerging Chinese Cities: Implications for Global Urban Studies
• Miguel Kanai: A more cosmopolitan urban (global) field? Reflections based on bibliometric evidence
• Adriana Allen: TBC

Closed sessions:

The symposium takes place all-day on Monday 16 May and Tuesday 17 May, but only UCL students and staff can attend the closed sessions on a very limited basis - please contact Jordan Rowe for more information. You can view the entire programme and abstracts here (pdf).

Further links:

• RSVP on Eventbrite: globalurbanisms.eventbrite.co.uk