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November 6, 2007
GCI Panel Discussion |
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| Title |
China and India: Governance, Urban
Development, and Sustainability in the Cities of the Global South
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| Speakers |
PhD Student Panel:
Ratoola Kundu
3rd Year PhD Student, Urban Planning & Policy, UIC
Kamna Lal
2nd Year PhD Student, Public Administration, UIC
Meng Sun
2nd Year PhD Student, Urban Planning & Policy, UIC
Lan Wang
PhD Candidate, Urban Planning & Policy, UIC
Barry Weisberg, JD
PhD Candidate, Criminal Justice, UIC
Moderator:
David C. Perry
Director, Great Cities Institute
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| Location |
Great Cities Institute, Suite 400 CUPPA Hall
412 South Peoria, Chicago, IL 60607
RSVP
Appreciated: (312) 996-8700 |
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The scholarship with regard to the process of urbanization
in the context of globalization has been dominated by the "global cities"
paradigm in which Saskia Sassen outlines the increasing centrality of cities as
they become "command centers" in the expansion of global capitalism,
destabilizing the older networks of governance that are embodied in the nation-state.
As a result, much of the theorization on urbanization in the recent past has been
focused on cities in the developed regions of the world such as New York, London and
Tokyo that serve as the material and symbolic sites for global economic production.
The cities of the developing countries therefore remain marginal to this theorization
of the urban, either defined by the lack of full-scale globalization, or through processes
that mimic the developments in the core, or as sites of increasing chaos, poverty and
inequality.
This panel discussion brings together a diverse group of PhD students at UIC, from the
fields of urban planning and design, criminal justice and public administration, conducting
research in the cities of the global south. While their approaches might vary, they are all
engaged in contributing to the production of knowledge on newly emerging global urban
agglomerations and the concurrent shifts in the political economy, particularly urban
governance. This reflects a demographic transformation of historical proportions wherein
the majority of the world's urban dwellers will be in cities of the developing countries.
Two-thirds of the world's urban population growth will be occurring in the cities of the
developing regions of the world, bringing about rapid uneven distribution of incomes,
the proliferation of slum cities, rising demand for urban infrastructure and investment -–
physical and social. The discussants will debate some of the emerging contradictions and
tensions faced by the cities of the global south and locate areas of further research.
The thrust will be on the possibilities of constructing alternative theories of understanding
this massive urban change.
Ratoola Kundu will be presenting on the transformations that take place at
the urban fringes and the practices of informality that shape it and are in turn regulated by
the policies of the local government as well as global flows of economic investment, using the
case of the fringes of Kolkata in India as an illustration.
Kamna Lal will be investigating semi-formal institutional arrangement for
delivery of urban environmental services in an Indian city and drawing out the changes in the
relationship between political economy and the ecology of the city in a liberalizing environment.
Meng Sun’s presentation is on the possible material and social impacts of
the Olympic 2008 summer games on the city of Beijing and the significance of "event" or spectacle
driven development of urban centers.
Lan Wang will be dealing with the emergence of new global urban planning
and design practices that are being rapidly transplanted into the New Towns of China's urban
regions and the kinds of political, economic, socio-cultural changes that drive and are in turn
shaped by these design practices of producing "global cities".
Barry Weisberg will be presenting on the need to reformulate an understanding
of what constitutes safety and security with respect to urban populations and infrastructure
of the mega cities in developing countries, focusing on Shanghai.
Download a podcast of this seminar.
[This is a 74 MB mp3 file,
so may take a few minutes to download.]
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