Following the award of the British Academy grant to study “The Urban Spectre of Global China: Mechanisms, Consequences, and Alternatives for Urban Futures“, a project kick-off workshop was held on 19 June 2019 at LSE, hosted by the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. Both Co-Investigators, Dr Sin Yee Koh and Dr Yimin Zhao, joined us as they have been in London for the first leg of fieldwork on the Royal Albert Dock site.

The workshop involved a group presentation on the project scope by the project team, followed by a roundtable panel discussion with invited experts’ highly insightful inputs and further suggestions.

Speakers

  • Prof. Hyun Bang Shin, Principal Investigator
    Prof. Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Director of Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE.
  • Dr Sin Yee Koh, Co-Investigator
    Dr Koh is Senior Lecturer in Global Studies, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University Malaysia.
  • Dr Yimin Zhao, Co-Investigator
    Dr Zhao is Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and Management, School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China.

Panellists: 

  • Dr Charlotte Goodburn is Lecturer in Chinese Politics and Development and Deputy Director of the Lau China Institute, King’s College London. She completed her PhD in the Department of Land Economy at Cambridge, and holds a BA (in History) and an MPhil (in Contemporary Chinese Studies), also from Cambridge. She studied Mandarin at Peking University and at Taiwan Normal University, and has spent several years working, studying and conducting fieldwork in China. Her current research interests include Chinese politics and development, rural-urban migration and urbanisation, gender and household dynamics, and childhood and intergenerational poverty.
  • Prof. Ian Gordon is Emeritus Professor of Human Geography at LSE. His main research interests have been in urban development and policies, spatial labour markets, migration and spatial interaction, particularly in the context of major metropolitan regions. He led the team carrying out the London ‘integrative city study’ for ESRC’s Cities, Competitiveness and Cohesion programme. In April 2004 he was the academic convenor for the Leverhulme International Symposium at the LSE on The Resurgent City. Ian is currently a member of: the Mayor’s Outer London Commission; and the Department of Communities and Local Government’s Regeneration and Economic Development Analysis Expert Panel.
  • Prof. Scott Lash is Visiting Professor at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong and Senior Research Associate at Oxford COMPAS (Centre on Migration Policy and Society). He is author or co-author of Experience, China Constructing Capitalism, Economies of Signs and Space, Critique of Information, The End of Organized Capitalism, and Reflexive Modernization. There are eight translations of his books in Chinese and a number in Korean and Japanese. His current research is on logistics and infrastructure power in China. 
  • Prof. Jennifer Robinson is Chair of Human Geography at UCL’s Urban Laboratory. Her current research interests focus on developing a postcolonial critique of urban studies. Her book, Ordinary Cities (2006) looks at how the interplay between urban modernity and development frames a conceptual and practical divide between “Western” and “Third World” cities. She is currently undertaking an ESRC-funded research project that compares the governance of large scale urban development projects in London, Johannesburg and Shanghai.