East Asia; Southeast Asia; China; Korea; Malaysia; the Philippines; Singapore; Thailand; Vietnam; Ecuador; Kuwait

The Urban Spectre of Global China: Mechanisms, Consequences, and Alternatives for Urban Futures

This collaborative project is based on a British Academy grant for its Tackling the UK's International Challenges programme. The project ran from April 2019 to April 2022 and examined four large-scale property development projects of Chinese capital, to question the ways in which the urban has been reconfigured by China’s global expansion. Visit the project web page for further details.

Asian Capital and the Rise of Smart Urbanism

This project was supported by a research grant from the LSE Middle East Centre’s Kuwait Programme, to undertake a SEAC project between September 2019 and June 2021, which aimed to analyse and compare how Asian cities have risen to become reference points for the development of cities in the Global South. The project examined the experience of building new cities branded as smart cities in Kuwait and the Philippines. The Kuwait study was funded by the Kuwait programme Research Grant from the LSE Middle East Centre. Visit the project web page for further details.

COVID-19 and Southeast Asia

COVID-19 presented huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies and people from all walks of life, but its impact is very much variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with highly uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. COVID-19 revealed existing contradictions and inequalities in our society, and compelled us to question what it means to return to 'normal'. In this regard, the research team at LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, led by Professor Hyun Bang Shin, reflected upon what the crises meant for urbanisation, governance and connectivity in Southeast Asia, and contemplated post-COVID-19 urban futures by initially focusing on three themes in particular: community-based initiatives in response to COVID-19; movements of different groups of people in and out of Southeast Asia; digital and technological infrastructures and visualisation. The project resulted in an Open Access edited volume, COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-Pandemic World, and a number of blogs on LSE Southeast Asia Blog. Visit the project web page for further details.

Professor Shin’s scholarly contributions span four key areas: gentrification, urban political economy, urban struggles, and the circulation of urbanisms. His work on gentrification redefines gentrification as a global yet context-specific process, challenging Western-centric paradigms in urban studies. His research on urban growth politics extends to examining mega-events and megaprojects as tools of state power and capital accumulation, revealing their socio-economic impacts and inequalities. His research on urban struggles underscores the importance of cross-class alliances and context-sensitive interpretations of urban rights. He has also advanced understanding of the global circulation of urbanism, particularly how state-driven urban models in East and Southeast Asia shape global urban futures, often perpetuating inequalities. For each of his key research areas, please visit his research website here.

Professor Shin's research relates to these Department of Geography and Environment research themes:

• City Economies
• Housing, Land and Property
• Regional Economic Development
• Global Urban Worlds
• Environmental Politics and Justice

For a full list of publications, please visit here.

Books

Shin, H.B., Zhao, S. and Koh, S.Y. (eds.) (in press) The Urbanising Dynamics of Global China: Speculation, Articulation, and Translation in Global Capitalism. Routledge

• This is a republication edition of the special issue of the same title from Urban Geography 43(10): 1457-1571

Shin, H.B. and Gimm, D-W. (eds.) (2025) The Political Economy of Megaprojects in Asia: State Power, Land Control, Financial Flows, and Dispossession. Regions and Cities Series. Routledge

Shin, H.B., Mckenzie, M. and Oh, D-Y. (eds.) (2022) Covid-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-pandemic World. London: LSE Press [Open Access]

Park, S.H., Shin, H.B. and Kang, H.S. (eds.) (2021) Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge

Chen, Y-L. and Shin, H.B. (eds.) (2019) Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia. The Contemporary City Series. Palgrave Macmillan

Shin, H.B. (ed.) (2017) Anti Gentrification: What is to be Done. Seoul: Dongnyeog. [In Korean: 신현방 (편저) <안티 젠트리피케이션, 우리는 무엇을 할 것 인가> 서울: 도서출판 동녘]

Lees, L., Shin, H.B. and López-Morales, E. (2016) Planetary Gentrification. Cambridge: Polity Press

• Chinese translation: (2022) 星球绅士化. 中国建筑工业出版社 (译者: 宋伟轩, 黄幸, 郭嘉颖)

Lees, L., Shin, H.B. and López-Morales, E. (eds.) (2015) Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement. Bristol: Policy Press

Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters (since 2018)

Jin, Y. and Shin, H.B. (2025) Revisiting urban governance in China: The manifestation of entrepreneurial Neo-managerialism in shantytown redevelopment in Luzhou. Urban Studies [View]

Lattanan, P., Areeprachakun, P., Cheewinsiriwat, P., Patnukao, A., Shin, H.B. and Rigg, J. (2024) From causality to blame: Exploring flooding, factories and land conversion in Eastern Thailand. Australian Geographer 55(2): 203-227

Oh, D. and Shin, H.B. (2023) University as Real Estate Developer: Comparative Perspectives from the Global East. Geoforum 144, 103764

Shin, H.B. (2023) The political economy of mega-events as spectacles in the global East. In: Aramata, M. (ed.) Political Economy of the Tokyo Olympics: Unrestrained Capital and Development without Sustainable Principles. London: Routledge, pp. 30-48

Koh, S.Y., Zhao, Y. and Shin, H.B. (2022) Moving the Mountain and Greening the Sea for Whom? “Forest City”and the Transplantation of Green Urbanism in Iskandar Malaysia. Urban Geography. 43(10): 1469-1695 [View]

Shin, H.B., Zhao, Y. and Koh, S.Y. (2022) The Urbanising Dynamics of Global China: Speculation, articulation, and translation in global capitalism – an introduction. Urban Geography 43(10): 1457-1468 

Nogueira, M. and Shin, H.B. (2022) The “right to the city centre”: Political struggles of street vendors in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 26(5-6): 1012-1028

Shin, H.B. (2021) Theorising from where? Reflections on de-centring global (South) urbanism. In: Lancione, M. and McFarlane, C. (eds.) Global Urbanism: Knowledge, Power and the City. Routledge, pp. 62-71

Shin, H.B., Zhao, Y. and Koh, S.Y. (2020) Whither Progressive Urban Futures? Critical Reflections on the Politics of Temporality in Asia. CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 24(1-2): 244-254

Shin, H.B. (2018) Urban movements and the genealogy of urban rights discourses: The case of urban Protesters against redevelopment and displacement in Seoul, South Korea. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108(2): 356-369 [View] 

Moreno, L. and Shin, H.B. (eds.) (2018) The urban process under planetary accumulation by dispossession. CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 22(1): 78-168

Shin, H.B. and Zhao, Y. (2018) Urbanism as a state project: Lessons from Beijing’s green belts. In:  Jayne, M. (ed.) Chinese Urbanism: Critical Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 30-46 

Shin, H.B. (2018) Studying global gentrifications. In: Harrison, J. and Hoyler, M. (eds.) Doing Global Urban Research. London: SAGE, pp. 138-152