Asia is renowned for its rapid urbanization, yet this growth has unfolded unevenly across the region, affecting places and people in variegated ways. With urban expansion has come an increasing demand for natural resources, spurring extractive industries that significantly reshape natural landscapes. This urban growth has led to the transformation of rural lands into construction sites and the reclamation of swamps, lakes, and seas—changes most acutely felt in urban peripheries and coastal zones. An urgent question facing the region is how to plan and govern cities in the context of climate emergencies and whether the current pace of urbanization can continue without compromising the well-being of urban populations. Within this context, the panel brings together diverse perspectives to discuss the future of Asian cities, presenting some of their key arguments rooted in their latest research.
This Seminar was recorded and the video can be watched here.
Speaker and Chair Biographies:
Prof Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE. Prof Shin’s research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of urbanisation with particular attention to cities in Asian countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea and China. Prof Shin has published widely in major international journals and contributed to numerous books on the above themes. His most recent books include Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (2021, Routledge); Covid-19 in Southeast Asia: An Insight into a Post-Pandemic World (LSE Press, 2022); The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (forthcoming, Routledge).
Dr Yimin Zhao is an urban geographer with research expertise in critical urban studies and the spatial politics of urban change. His research mainly explores urban peripheries and the state in China and Asia through the analytical lenses of language, materiality, and everyday life. He is an editor of City and a corresponding editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Before joining Durham University, he was an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and Management at Renmin University of China. He also held an SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich.
Diganta Das is an associate professor of Geography at Humanities and Social Studies Education Academic Group, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. He received his B.A.(Hons) in Geography from Cotton College, Masters in Geography from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India and M.Phil in Planning and Development from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from National University of Singapore (NUS). He is a human geographer. His research interests focus on relations between the production of smart cities, high-tech space making and issues of human agency in urban South Asia; (urban) policy mobility; changing dynamics of (urban) waterscape; and issues of liveability and sustainable urban development.
Dr Rita Padawangi is Associate Professor at Singapore University of Social Sciences. She received her PhD in sociology from Loyola University Chicago, a Master of Arts in Urban Design from the National University of Singapore, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Parahyangan Catholic University. Her research interests include the sociology of architecture, social movements and participatory urban development. She co-coordinates the Southeast Asia Neighbourhoods Network (SEANNET), an initiative for urban studies research and teaching, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation through the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS). She is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of Urbanization in Southeast Asia (2019).