How does planning dictate who can go where?  Displacement, and the making of urban violence

This event is the second of a public seminar series that puts reflections on violence at the centre of urban development planning. Across cities in both the Global South and Global North, diverse communities are increasingly subjected to various forms of displacement. Often, governments displace already marginalized urban populations under the guise of ‘public interest’, ‘reconstruction’, the pursuit of ‘urban safety and security’, or aspirations to become a ‘world-class city’ (Urban Displacement, 2023). In this session, speakers will examine how urban planning practices themselves can generate and exacerbate displacement and consequently urban violence and conflict in cities, drawing on case studies from the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America.
 

Speakers 

Melanie Lombard is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield, UK. Her research explores how people make cities, particularly in conditions of urban informality and crisis, using qualitative and storytelling methodologies. She has undertaken research funded by the British Academy, ESRC and Urban Studies Foundation in cities in Latin America, Europe and Africa. In 2024, her book ‘Urban Informality’ was published by Bristol University Press (with Philipp Horn).

Giovanna Astolfo is an urban researcher with a background in architectural theory and practice. At The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), UCL, she combines research and action learning from several contested and ungovernable urban geographies in South America, Southeast Asia, Southern, Eastern Europe and UK, with a focus on non-conventional urbanisms, continuous displacement and migration, spatial violence and housing justice. 

Deen Sharp is an LSE Visiting Fellow in Human Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a senior advisor for the Aga Khan Prize for Architecture. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the co-director of Terreform, Center for Advanced Urban Research. Sharp is the co-editor with Claire Panetta of Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings (Urban Research, 2016) and co-editor with Michael Sorkin Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope (Terreform and American University in Cairo Press, 2021). He has also published in Progress in Human Geography, Urban Studies and The Journal of Architecture. 

Chair: Azadeh Mashayekhi, Lecturer at the Bartlett Urban Development Planning Unit