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Urban Growth and Social Movements in Asia

Urban Growth and Social Movements in Asia
Thursday, September 22, 2022
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM (Eastern Time)

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About the Event

Asian countries have grown at a record-setting pace this century, generating enormous economic growth and becoming hubs of creativity and cosmopolitanism for millions of residents, but also resulting in displacement of lower-income residents and unequal distribution of wealth. In some places, this has led to protests and the emergence of new social movements proclaiming the rights to housing, to subsistence, and “to the city.” Professor Hyun Bang Shin [Shin, Hyun Bang], a professor of geography and urban studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and director of Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, will share his analysis from years of studying urban development and anti-gentrification movements in Asian cities, especially those in South Korea, China, and Southeast Asia. His discussant will be Duke Law Professor Qiao Shitong, who is an expert on property rights in China.

About the speaker

Hyun Bang Shin is professor of geography and urban studies and director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research centers on the political economy of urbanization, politics of displacement, gentrification, housing, the right to the city, urban spectacles, and speculative urban-ism with particular attention to cities in Asia. Professor Shin is editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation. He sits on the international advisory board of the journal Antipode and on the editorial board of the journals Urban GeographyCITYCity, Culture and SocietySpace and Environment [in Korea], and China City Planning Review [in China]. He is also a co-organizer of the Urban Salon, an interdisciplinary London forum for architecture, cities and international urbanism. He edits LSE blogs, Field Research Methods Lab and Southeast Asia Blog. His books include Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement (Policy Press, 2015), Planetary Gentrification (Polity Press, 2016)Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (2021, Routledge); and Covid-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-pandemic World (2022, LSE Press).

About the discussant

Shitong Qiao is a law professor and the Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar at Duke Law School. He was a tenured professor at the University of Hong Kong, a Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) fellow at Princeton University, and the inaugural Jerome A. Cohen Visiting Professor of Law at NYU. He also taught in Shenzhen (Peking University School of Transnational Law) and Shanghai (NYU Shanghai). Professor Qiao is an expert on property and urban law with a focus on comparative law and China. His first monograph, Chinese Small Property: The Co-Evolution of Law and Social Norms, explores the relationship between law and market transition, and has won multiple prizes in the US and Asia. He is working on his second monograph, The Authoritarian Commons, which explores the relationship between law and social transformation. Professor Qiao has also published a number of journal articles in top American and Chinese law journals. Professor Qiao graduated from Wuhan (LL.B.), Peking (MPhil), and Yale (LL.M., J.S.D.). Professor Qiao has served as an expert (witness) on the Chinese property regime in China, Canada, and the US.