Urban alliances for global urban justice

The last decade has witnessed a growth in the co-production of knowledge on, and practice-based collaborative responses to, urban (in)justice. In a context marked by increasing socio-spatial and environmental inequalities, and the growing vulnerability of so-called ‘precarious neighborhoods’ vis à vis the financialisation of the urban, new or reinvigorated platforms of solidarity, ‘counter-knowledge’, advocacy and action have emerged, bringing together a constellation of actors. Growing connections between social movements have been noteworthy in this instance, but so too has the emergence of global hybrid alliances, moving towards coordinated expressions of the demand for justice.

This research project sits squarely within this dynamic realm of collaborative urban action. It seeks to contribute to, and galvanise, the burgeoning academic production coming to grips with these urban alliances globally. Public participation and collaborative planning/governance have been dynamics fields of enquiry for a couple of decades – reinvigorated by an interest in social movements and research on the commons and democratic experiments in the global north, along with ongoing research on grassroots movements and processes of self-help and auto-organisation in the global south. Meanwhile, critical social sciences have diagnosed existing practices against normative imperatives, but have often struggled with (or shied away from) pragmatic engagement with policy-making and action

Area

The Built Environment

UCL leads

• Professor Barbara Lipietz, Faculty of the Built Environment