How does illicit trafficking shape urban planning?

Overview

A DPU Urban Transformation Cluster event

The prevalence of illicit flows and associated criminal activity increasingly challenges planners’ capacity to address their impacts on urban safety and, more broadly, on systems of urban governance. Yet trafficking—and the capital it generates—is deeply intertwined with urban development processes across diverse contexts. This influence ranges from the laundering of illicit capital through real‑estate markets and large‑scale infrastructure projects, to the formation of criminalised “parallel states” in which organised groups regulate, manage, and at times monopolise urban services and governance functions. This fifth session in our Urban Planning and Violence series seeks to unpack the complex relationship between illicit flows and urban development, and to explore the challenges they pose for advancing more equitable and accountable forms of development planning in contemporary cities.
 

Speakers:

Gabriel Feltran is a Research Professor CNRS at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po, Paris. He has authored and edited several books and articles, including « Stolen Cars: A Journey through São Paulo’s Urban Conflict » (Wiley SUSC series, 2022); « The Entangled City: Crime as Urban Fabric in São Paulo » (Manchester University Press, 2020), and the documentary series « PCC: The Secret Power » (HBOMax, 2022), adapted from his book in Portuguese (« Irmãos: uma história do PCC », 2018). His newest article is entitled A Criminal Platform for the Cocaine Trade: Governance Mechanisms Changing the Balance of Power in a Transcontinental Value Chain (European Journal of Sociology, 2025). Title of the Presentation: “Cocaine, Criminal Governance, and the Coproduction of Urban Spaces” Since 2016, expanding cocaine flows have transformed the scale of Latin American and European illicit markets. Billions of euros are laundered across urban economies, from real estate to infrastructure. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this talk examines how criminal governance shapes the co-production of cities through (il)licit value chains.

Rowland Atkinson (University of Sheffield) is Chair in Inclusive Societies at the University of Sheffield. Rowland is an urban sociologist whose work focuses on the consequences for cities of social divisions. These interests have generated work on displacement from gentrification, social exclusion and housing policy interventions, and the rise of gated communities. Most recently, his work has focused on the impact of wealth and the wealthy on urban life. Title of the presentation: Dark City as Violence Accelerator: The Role of Urban Property and Money Laundering in Social Harm.

Chairs: Barbara Lipietz and Azadeh Mashayekhi

Zoom link found here