Cities in a World of Cities: Traces of elsewhere in the making of city futures
Prof. Jennifer Robinson, Department of Geography, University College London

The Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, University of Oxford, presents a series of three lectures with distinguished academics whose inspirational work has contributed significantly to our understanding of contemporary cities and societies.

The first seminar examines what must be considered in the making of city futures. Under conditions of globalisation, city futures are imagined in the context of a wider world of cities: policy making for cities is profoundly internationalised. And in the wake of vast changes where urbanisation is taking place across the globe, scholars must now theorise the contemporary urban condition with reference to a world of diverse cities. Both require new vocabularies and new ways of working with traces of elsewhere as city futures are re-imagined: for policy makers to operate at the complex interface between circulating policies and local political contestations, and for scholars to revitalise and invent comparative and international ways of doing research.

About the speaker

Jennifer Robinson has published widely in urban geography: on the politics of segregation in South African cities (The Power of Apartheid, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996), on urban development in post-apartheid cities, and, more generally, her book, Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (Routledge: 2006) established a post-colonial critique of urban studies, arguing for urban theory to draw on the diversity of urban experiences across the globe in developing more general accounts of cities.

A drinks reception will follow after the lecture.

Dates for future seminars:

Hilary Term:
7th March 2012
Prof. Simon Marvin, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Urban & Regional Futures, University of Salford

Trinity Term:
24th April 2012
Prof. Neil Smith, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

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