Resource urbanisms: natural resources, urban form and infrastructure in the case of Asia's diverging city models

‘Resource urbanisms: natural resources, urban form and infrastructure in the case of Asia’s diverging city models’ is a two-year LSE Cities research project (2015-2017) co-funded by LSE Kuwait Programme to examine multiple aspects of how natural resources, urban form and infrastructure affect each other and potentially lead to the establishment of divergent forms of urbanism.

The project’s point of departure is the common assumption that cities and urban development are directly affected by the availability and costs of natural resources, and that in turn, different forms of urban development result in substantial differences in resource use. The project will primarily focus on the specific case of two natural resources, land and energy, and explore their relationships with city form, urban dwelling and mobility. It will analyse these relationships through a comparative case study approach which considers extreme and divergent city models in Asia.

The research will include the multi-scale temporal analysis of different types and changes of urban development in Kuwait and Abu Dhabi (a second Middle East comparator case) and two contrasting city types in East Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The main outputs of the research will be a book and three papers to be submitted to academic journals with high impact factor.

In addition to written outputs of the project a central seminar will take place early 2017 to act as a way to engage with local, national and international academics on findings arising out of the research. The partners and local senior research associates representing each of the four case study cities will be invited to come to London and present, discuss and compare research findings to date, along with members of the LSE Cities team and other invited local experts.

A book launch event will bring to LSE national and international academics and experts on the topic while being open to a wider audience. During the event the book research process and results will be the centre of the discussion.

Throughout the project other workshops, seminars and activities will support permanent engaging with local researchers and a variety of institutions.