Resource Urbanisms

‘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 co-funded by LSE Kuwait Programme/LSE Middle East Centre 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.

Principal Investigator
Philipp Rode

Project Experts
Sharifa Alshalfan
JM Bahu (EIFER)
Andreas Koch (EIFER)
Christiane Lange (HKU)
Peter Schwinger
Monjur Syed (EIFER)
Devisari Tunas (FCL/ETH)
Steffen Hertog (LSE)
Clemence Montagne (PSUAD)

Project coordinator
Alexandra Gomes

Researchers
Muhammad Adeel, Sharifa Alshalfan, Jenny McArthur, Fizzah Sajjad

18 March 2021 | Resource Urbanisms between abundance and constraints research seminar

7 November 2017 | Efficiency by Design: Urban growth in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Singapore

22 March 2017 | Resource Urbanisms Project Workshop - London

3 November 2016 | Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life

28 September 2016 | Resource Urbanisms Project Workshop - Kuwait

27 September 2016 | Cities and the new climate economy: on the role of urban form and transport

26 September 2016 | Resource Urbanisms Project Workshop - Abu Dhabi

8 March 2021 | Alexandra Gomes speaks on Resource Urbanisms at the Women in Data Science conference at Prince Sultan University, Riyadh

27 Nov 2017 | Alexandra Gomes speaks on Resource Urbanisms at Newcastle University

7 Nov 2017 | Philipp Rode launches Resource Urbanisms report in Kuwait

8 Sep 2017 | Philipp Rode presents Resource Urbanisms research at ETH Zurich

6 Sep 2017 | Philipp Rode to deliver keynote at International Housing Forum

10 Jul 2017 | Resource Urbanisms presented at AESOP conference

27 Apr 2017 | Alexandra Gomes contributes to planning and environmental management seminar at the University of Manchester

29 Mar 2017 | Muhammad Adeel to present on resource urbanisms project in Paris

27 Sep 2016 | Philipp Rode presents on cities and the new climate economy in Kuwait

28 Jul 2015 | New LSE Cities research project on Resource Urbanisms

Research reports

Resource Urbanisms

Between Abundance and Constraints: The Natural Resource Equation of Asia's Diverging, Higher-Income City Models - publication details | download full PDF (3.33 MB)

Principal Investigator
Philipp Rode

Project coordinator
Alexandra Gomes

Researchers
Muhammad Adeel, Sharifa Alshalfan, Jenny McArthur, Fizzah Sajjad

Project partner
European Institute for Energy Research (EIFER)

Project Collaboration
Paris-Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

Project funders
LSE Cities, LSE Kuwait Programme

Research strand
Cities, environment and climate change

Duration
2015–2017

Keywords
East Asia, Middle East, Cities, Land, Energy, Urban form, Transport

Resource Urbanisms

Natural resources, urban form and infrastructure in the case of Asia’s diverging city models

The Resource Urbanisms project is co-funded by LSE Kuwait Programme and it aims at examining multiple aspects of how natural resources, urban form and infrastructure affect each other and potentially lead to the establishment of divergent forms of urbanism.

Project Team

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