People-led Development: interstitial practice and the production of differential spaces in Hanoi
In this seminar, Hoai Anh Tran presents key discussions in her recently published book People-led Development: Interstitial Practice and the Production of Differential Spaces in Hanoi (2026, Routledge), co-authored with Ngai-Ming Yip. Using Hanoi as a case study, the book explores city-making with a focus on activities carried out by ordinary people.
The book integrates the concept of interstitial practice with Lefebvre’s framework of the production of differential space to conceptualise the diverse and seemingly ad-hoc space-making activities of urban residents. These practices are situated in relation to the state’s disciplining projects through housing and urban planning. Moving beyond a simplistic, dichotomised discussion of informality and formality the book examines the tensions between state-driven visions of modernized urbanisation and everyday spatial practices of ordinary people. The book demonstrates how focusing on interstitial practices enables a more nuanced understanding of the diverse processes through which various forms differential spaces are produced.
By focusing on the more “ordinary components” of city-making that are often overlooked or neglected, the book highlights the spatial agency of ordinary people in responding to the imposition of state-sanctioned abstract spaces and the suppression of state social engineering. It argues that induced or minimal differential spaces, while fragmented and limited in scale, carry political significance. These spaces not only act as forms of resistance, but their accumulation also holds transformative potential.
Meet our speakers and chair
Hoai Anh Tran is an Associate Professor of Built Environment at the Department of Urban Studies, Malmö University, Sweden. Her research provides a critical analysis of the relationship between the state and society in urban space production, in the formulation and implementation of urban and housing policies, as well as the relationship between people and the built environment, with studies from Vietnam and Sweden. Her research topics include urban development policies and social justice, sustainable planning, urban space production, housing research, gentrification, everyday mobility, informality, and rhythm analysis.
Mara Nogueira is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London. She is an urban geographer with an interdisciplinary background in Geography and Economics and research expertise on urbanisation in the Global South with a focus on socio-spatial inequalities and grassroots mobilisation in Brazil. Her scholarship is committed to identifying the roots and ways of addressing socio-spatial inequalities with an aim to promote social justice. She is the Principal Investigator of the project Globalisation from below: livelihoods, trade and transnationalism in Brazil’s informal economy, funded by the British Academy.
Hanh-An Trinh is a PhD student at the Department of Geography & Environment at LSE. Her current research looks at the everyday imaginaries of urban futures, examining how the residents and workers anticipate and speculate on the futures of themselves and of their city.
Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK, Professor Shin has contributed to reshaping the understanding of contemporary urban transformation, emphasising the socio-political dynamics of cities in rapidly developing regions, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. From 2018 to 2023, he served as Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE, fostering interdisciplinary research on Asia. He was the Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from 2021 to 2024 and a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation from 2016 to 2023, contributing to global urban scholarship and mentorship. Since 2009, he has co-organised The Urban Salon, a London-based forum for architecture, cities, and international urbanism.
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