As part of the SEAC Southeast Asian Waters Seminar series Dr. Kian Goh (Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA) spoke on Jakarta's urban waterscapes and climate change. The talk was chaired by Prof. Hyun Bang Shin.
Talk Abstract
From the flooding along one river, one watershed, how do we understand broader regional and global debates about urban water? The problem of cities and environments takes on different forms depending on point of view, framework of understanding, and scale of investigation. In this talk I trace the conceptual and physical contours of urban waterscapes in Jakarta across conflicting ideas and narratives, and link them to emerging debates around climate change responses around the world and critical concerns of justice. Building on research explored in my book Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice (MIT Press 2021), which examined the politics of urban climate change responses within and between Jakarta, New York, and Rotterdam, I focus on what it means, riffing on Ananya Roy’s exhortation, to view all urban ecologies from this particular place on the map. Here I take seriously – and attempt to hold in view, if not resolve – contested claims and questions about worldviews, knowledge production, and privilege and positionality in urban environmental research.
A video recording of this event is available to watch here.
Speaker and Chair Biographies
Dr Kian Goh (@kiangoh) is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. Dr. Goh’s current research investigates the urban spatial politics of climate change adaptation. This research traces flows of ideas and influence between sites and adaptation strategies in Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. More broadly, her research interests include urban theory, urban design, environmental planning, and urban political ecology.
Prof. Hyun Bang Shin (@urbancommune) is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and directs the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. His research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of speculative urbanisation, gentrification and displacement, urban spectacles, and urbanism with particular attention to Asian cities. His books include Planetary Gentrification (Polity, 2016), Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (Routledge, 2021), and The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (Routledge, forthcoming). He is Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and is also a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation.