MSc HGUS

Urbanisation, Planning and Development

Research Cluster

Our research examines issues of urbanisation, planning and development in the major world regions of Africa, Asia, Europe and the UK, Latin America and North America.

We are interested in global transformations and the human-level consequences that arise from them in different places.

 

One strand of our research focuses on the social and spatial dimensions of urbanisation and development in cities of the Global South. The second focuses on the economics and politics of land use and planning in cities around the world. 

Our research engages broad theoretical questions but we also have a strong tradition of innovative, international and comparative fieldwork. We take seriously a place-based approach to research, which is foundational to our contributions to human geography, urban planning, and urban studies. We are interested in global transformations and the human-level consequences that arise from them in different places.

Research focus

Our current research addresses questions about cities, infrastructure, politics, class, migration, security, gender and race, such as:

  • How do we plan for a rapidly urbanising world?
  • How are interconnected forms of racial and spatial difference produced, reproduced, and transformed?
  • How does the urban travel across geographies? Do cities in the Global South provide an alternative source of imagining the urban?
  • How is displacement and dispossession to be re-conceptualised?
  • How do we understand violence and security in the cities of the South?
  • How do people conduct everyday lives in conditions of urban inequality?

People

We are a unique and interdisciplinary group of scholars working at the interface of human geography, planning and urban studies. 

Faculty 

 

ryan centner 2019 Cropped

Dr Ryan Centner

Assistant Professor of Urban Geography

Key Expertise:

  • Comparative Urban Studies
  • Globalisation and Development
  • Fieldwork Methods 
julia corwin 2019 Cropped

Julia Corwin

Assistant Professor in Environmental Geography

Key Expertise:

  • Waste
  • Commodities
  • Social Justice
ian gordon Cropped

Prof Ian Gordon

Emeritus Professor of Human Geography

Key Expertise:

  • Applied Urban Economics
  • Migration
  • Regional Development
nancy holman 2020

Dr Nancy Holman

Associate Professor of Urban Planning

Key Expertise:

  • Urban Planning
  • Planning Regulation
  • Heritage Conservation 
gareth jones 2023

Prof Gareth A. Jones

Professor of Urban Geography

Key Expertise:

  • Urban Geography
  • Gated Communities
  • Gentrification
murray low 2019 Cropped

Dr Murray Low

Associate Professor of Human Geography

Key Expertise:

  • Global Democracy
  • Geography of Elections
  • Political Representation
alan mace 2022

Dr Alan Mace

Associate Professor of Urban Planning Studies

Key Expertise:

  • Politics of Urban Planning
  • Cultural Geography
  • Community Engagement
claire mercer

Prof Claire Mercer

Professor of Urban Geography

Key Expertise:

  • NGOs in Africa
  • Civil Society
  • Suburbs
erica pani

Dr Erica Pani

Assistant Professor of Local Economic Development and Planning 

Key Expertise:

  • Local Economic Development
  • Research Methods
  • Urban Planning
laura pulido 386x216

Professor Laura Pulido

Centennial Professor 

Key Expertise:

  • Race
  • Environmental Justice
  • American Studies
Romola Sanyal (1) Cropped

Dr Romola Sanyal

Associate Professor of Urban Geography

Key Expertise:

  • Urban Citizenship
  • Housing
  • Humanitarian Crises
hyun bang shin 24 Cropped (1)

Prof Hyun Bang Shin

Professor of Geography and Urban Studies

Key Expertise:

  • Urban Political Economy
  • Gentrification and Displacement
  • East and Southeast Asia
jessie speer 2022

Dr Jessie Speer

Assistant Professor in Human Geography 

Key Expertise:

  • Homelessness
  • Urban Displacement
  • Feminist Geographies
austin zeiderman 2022

Dr Austin Zeidermann

Associate Professor of Geography

Key Expertise:

  • Urbanisation
  • Development
  • Latin America

 

Fellows

aretousa_bloom

Aretousa Bloom
a.a.bloom@lse.ac.uk

 

 

LSE Fellow in Urban Geography

 

 

pooya 2022 (1)

Pooya Ghoddousi 
p.ghoddousi@lse.ac.uk 

LSE Fellow in Human Geography

 

Find our current research students on the PhD students page.

 

Summer School

Our courses 

beijing summer school

The Political Economy of Urbanisation in China and Asia: Globalisation and Uneven Development

The course explores the contemporary dynamics of urbanisation in Asia, with special emphasis on cities in China and other East and Southeast Asian economies, which share the experiences of rapid urban development with strong state intervention in the context of condensed industrialisation.

Course leader: Prof Hyun Bang Shin

Location: Beijing

Learn more about this course

 

 

Research projects

Displacement Urbanism

Staff involved: Romola Sanyal

How do we conceptualise Southern Urbanism using the idea of displacement? This project uses a postcolonial lens to answer this question by putting forward the concept of Displacement Urbanism. It argues that the urban condition in the Global South is created through displacement - through the categorisation and politics of the displaced, their relationships with local communities and governments and the interventions of the humanitarian system. Read more.

Domicide

Staff involved: Deen Sharp

Domicide is a three part video project (links here to videos One, Two and Three) exploring the impact of the destruction of cities and towns, architecture and cultural heritage sites following conflict. The film follows accounts of violence and conflict across different regions and moments in history.

The project was undertaken by Dr Ammar Azzouz, an analyst at Arup and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Oxford. The video includes a series of interviews with Dr Deen Shariff Sharp (LSE), Dr Dacia Viejo Rose (University of Cambridge), Dr Joanna Kusiak (University of Cambridge) and Dr Martin Coward (University of Manchester), Sary A. Najib (Danish Refugee Council) and also two UK-based Syrians whose lives have been impacted by the war.

This research was possible through support from Community Engagement and Global Research collaborations at Arup. Over the past three years at Arup, Ammar has explored different themes related to the destruction and reconstruction of contested cities and his research has taken him to different countries as he was invited to present in the US, Morocco, Germany and Lebanon. Film directed by Sophie Bernberg.

Local London renting under Covid

Staff involved: Kath Scanlon, Fanny Blanc and Beth Crankshaw 

We are looking at how the coronavirus pandemic, in combination with selective licensing of private landlords, welfare reforms and increased taxation, is affecting the behaviour of individual private landlords, and rents and conditions for tenants, at the lower end of the private rental market.  We will collect evidence from local case studies of three small areas in Bexley (Thamesmead), Redbridge (Ilford) and Southwark (Walworth & Old Kent Road) with selective licensing. We hope our findings help boroughs to improve conditions for both longer-term tenants and homeless households in TA, and help regulators design policies to incentivise landlords to serve this market and provide a good product. Read more.

London Rebuilding

Staff involved: Prof Christine Whitehead, Fanny Blanc, Beth Crankshaw 

LSE London is conducting research to review evidence on older homeowners’ physical property conditions and the health and societal impacts of disrepair. In particular, the literature review and data sources will clarify the extent to which older households face poor housing conditions, the evidence available about the nature of these physical conditions and the impact that poor housing conditions have on the affected households. Then, the quantitative data analysis of statistical datasets will help identify spatial variations and how these relate to dwelling age, type and tenure.   

Mortgage Prisoners

Staff involved: Kath Scanlon, Prof Christine Whitehead 

In one of its latest reports, LSE London set out potential solutions to address the problem of mortgage prisoners, who are home owners who borrowed from lenders that are no longer active. 

Progressing Planning

Staff involved: Dr Nancy Holman, Fanny Blanc, Beth Crankshaw, Martina Rotolo 

The LSE Regional and Urban Planning Studies programme teamed up with LSE London to organise the Progressing Planning series of events on housing, sustainability and advocacy and publish blogs on any relevant issue which refers to planning. Progressing Planning aims to bring back together alumni from the MSc programme and pair them up with academics from LSE. Progressing Planning also supports Planning for Justice, a coalition of students and academics committed to anti-racist planning efforts.

Covid and Homelessness

Staff involved: Prof Christine Whitehead, Dr Nancy Holman, Kath Scanlon, Fanny Blanc, Beth Crankshaw, Martina Rotolo 

LSE London estimated the possible impact on the private rented sector of Covid-19 and rising unemployment; looking at the scale of the current problem, the immediate and longer-term consequences for evictions and homelessness, focusing on the case of London and England overall. The goal was to examine possible approaches that the government might put in place after the end of the moratorium, providing some indication of relative costs and benefits.

Developer Contributions in Scotland

Staff involved: Christine Whitehead, Kath Scanlon, Fanny Blanc 

LSE London has been selected to lead a team of academic and professional specialists to undertake a project which evaluates the value, incidence and impact of developer contributions in Scotland. The team includes Prof Tony Crook of Sheffield University, John Boyle of Rettie and Co, Stefano Smith Planning, as well as Kathleen Scanlon and Christine Whitehead from LSE London.

Community-led housing and loneliness

Staff involved: Kath Scanlon

As part of the government’s loneliness strategy, LSE London, the Universities of Bristol, Lancaster and Northumbria are investigating whether residents of community-led housing (CLH) experience less loneliness than people living in conventional housing. The ten-month project, which started in late 2019, features in-depth case studies of five CLH communities in England including cohousing, CLTs, co-ops and self-build. The findings will help guide decisions about government support for community-led housing. Since lockdown restrictions have forced the team to suspend field visits until September.

At the end of February LSE London launched a survey which then included questions on how Community Led Housing residents are dealing with the Covid-19 crisis. The survey closed on April 24 and collected about 350 responses. Read more

Making Higher Density Suburban Development More Acceptable: The Impact of Design, Residents’ Characteristics and their Attitudes

Staff involved: Dr Alan Mace, Pablo Navarrete, Jacob Karlsson, Davide Zorloni, Dr Nancy Holman 

The research examines the impact of design on the perception and acceptability of density  on suburban development in London.  We tested 75 design features that may reduce the perception of density development and increase its acceptability.  Our work indicates that few treatments made medium density more acceptable and almost no treatments made higher density developments acceptable.  We also found that attitudinal factors matter, for example, suburban residents who accept that London has a housing crisis are more tolerant of housing developments at all densities (independent of design treatments).  We conclude therefore, that seeking a panacea of perfect design treatment to increase the acceptability without considering and working with reticence to accepting density will do little to alter public perceptions.  

Delivering new housing. Resident choices between housing development in their neighbourhood or on green belt

Staff involved: Alan Mace, Jacob Karlsson, Nancy Holman, Davide Zorloni 

The green belt is a strongly applied planning policy, intended to limit a city's outward growth. Very little green belt land is released for new housing. Our study examines residential attitudes in Bristol and Newcastle offering a choice between green belt land release for housing vs. the alternative of housing built in proximity to their own homes.

 

Essential infrastructure or ornamental afterthought? Reimagining urban green space planning in the contemporary city

Staff involved: Dr Meredith Whitten

Funding: ESRC  

Urban green space has risen up the agenda, buoyed by heightened awareness of nature’s role in addressing the two most urgent crises of the 21st century: climate change and public health. A focus on green infrastructure has further elevated urban green space, connecting it with critical urban systems and services, such as urban cooling and flood prevention. Yet, instead of being managed as “critical scaffolding” in a multifunctional, interconnected system of green infrastructure, green spaces are conceptualised as an ornamental amenity detached from the city around them and delivered through a siloed approach pervasive across local authorities.  

This research examines explores strategic green space planning, which is critical for addressing issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss, by exploring whether green space governance is becoming transcending the local level to become more strategic. In particular, the research examines whether two recently created organisations – the GLA’s London Green Spaces Commission and London National Park City Foundation, a grassroots charity – are having an impact on policy and planning approaches to green-space planning. The aim is to establish if these organisations represent a shift towards more integrated, strategic thinking regarding conceptualising, providing and managing London’s green space as an integrated system of green infrastructure.  

The Urban Spectre of Global China: Mechanisms, Consequences, and Alternatives for Urban Futures

Staff involved: Hyun Bang Shin

This project funded by the British Academy draws on methods of comparative urbanism and multi-sited ethnography, aiming to uncover the differentiated models of urban production in the Global China era and to generate new insights for inclusive approaches to urban space, nature and modernity. This international collaborative project critically examines the dynamics of urban political economy and contemporary urban living in a rapidly shifting geopolitical setting. By focusing on the local, national and global mechanisms and impacts of Chinese urban spectres, the project aims to deepen our understandings of interrelated urban future issues. Research will be conducted in London, Iskandar Malaysia, Beijing and Foshan.

Asian Capital and the Rise of Smart Urbanism

Staff involved: Hyun Bang Shin

This project aims to analyse and compare how Asian cities have risen to become reference points for the development of cities in the Global South. The project is to examine the experience of building new cities branded as smart cities in Kuwait and the Philippines. The Kuwait study is funded by the Kuwait programme Research Grant from the LSE Middle East Centre, while the Philippines study is supported by the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre.

Sustaining Kuwait in Unsustainable Times

Staff involved: Deen Sharp

What do Kuwaitis (both citizens and non-citizens) think about, and how do they experience, climate change? This is the central motivating question of this project. Kuwait is proportionally one of the highest producers and consumers of hydrocarbons, at the same time, it is at the forefront of many of the weather extremes that climate change will produce. What Kuwaitis think about the threat climate change poses and, if and how, they seek to address it matters. Our current carbon-led social age is unsustainable. To sustain Kuwait, and modern social life, in these unsustainable times neither advances in science, technology, and/or technocratic planning are sufficient. Political, social, and cultural change and engagement is required. To be able to change it, however, you must first understand it.

This project is dedicated to illuminating the global linkages and local specificities around the socio-economic and ecological challenge that Kuwait faces in relation to climate change. It will emphasize the specific urban challenges for Kuwaitis in relation to climate change and efforts–or lack thereof– toward sustainable urbanization. The project is aimed at listening to and illuminating Kuwaitis’ own perspective on the impact, urgency, and importance of climate change in their daily lives.

Lebanon Unsettled

Staff involved: Deen Sharp

In 2019, large-scale non-sectarian protests across Lebanon unsettled the political system and challenged the very understanding of Lebanese history, space and identity. This protest movement has provided the opportunity for a new generation in Lebanon to rewrite, and potentially heal, the bitterly disputed histories of the country. This project builds on the openings and momentum that this movement has created.

Lebanon Unsettled will establish, through student workshops and collaborative research, a publicly accessible archive of the recent urban protests in Lebanon. It will place the 2019 uprisings in their larger historical and geographical context. Through utilizing several new and enlarged archival collections, at USEK and beyond, this project will reread Lebanese history through urban revolt from the Ottoman era to the present day. By engaging scholars at LSE and across the scholarly community, this project puts urban protest in Lebanon into dialogue with protests in the Arab region but also across the globe from Asia to Latin America. 

Testing for acceptable higher-density suburban development

Staff involved: Nancy Holman, Jacob Karlsson, Alan Mace and Pablo Navarrete.

Progress to solve the London housing crisis means using the highly constrained land supply to accommodate the high demand for new housing, i.e. increasing density. One solution is to accommodate the required housing supply in higher density developments in traditionally low-density suburban areas. However,  this strategy is likely to meet resistance from existing residents slowing the delivery of required housing solutions.

 In this research, we are interested in understanding the contribution of building design to making higher-density housing developments more acceptable to suburban residents. Our hypothesis is that where higher-density development echoes traditional suburban elements it will be more acceptable. The research uses an innovative image-based randomised controlled trial technique to collect residents' views on simulated multiple density scenarios. In this experiment, participants will rate images containing diverse simulated suburban development allowing us to tests the significance of diverse design elements  (such as heights, roof-lines and the delineation of public and private space). As a result, we will build a set of building design policy recommendations to make new housing development more acceptable.

Fearing difference: perceived safety and ethnic differences in Milan, Italy

Staff involved: Nancy Holman, Alan Mace and Pablo Navarrete, Davide Zorloni

This research explores how people’s perception of safety in urban spaces relates to ethnicity. Urban safety has been increasingly tied to racialized dialogues about immigration. As the Italian state has shifted away from more collective views of society to one of individual responsibility, "danger" has been racialized in terms of protecting ‘good citizens’ from the ‘bad’ ones who are often portrayed as "disorderly" minorities and immigrants.

Using the case of Milan, we assess the relative impact of different ethnic compositions on declared perceptions of safety in a diversity of urban landscapes such as squares, alleys, high streets. Our hypothesis is that native-born white populations perceive safety through a racialized framing that interacts with urban spaces. To test this, we employ an image-based randomised controlled trial approach that uses photo simulation techniques to manipulate ethnicity composition in white-dominated urban spaces.  

Metropolitan Green Belt: Making more of the Metropolitan Green Belt

Staff involved: Alan Mace, Associate Professor of Planning & Fanny Blanc Policy Officer

The project will draw together academic and practice views on the purpose of the Metropolitan Green Belt.  The project promotes constructive debate on the purpose and future form of the Metropolitan Green Belt in the context of contemporary housing need and urban development planning in the region. It also asks how, in an era of localism, collaboration can effectively be pursued between different scales and authorities when reviewing the Metropolitan Green Belt.

We are seeking to identify the possibility of a more flexible approach to the Metropolitan Green Belt that supports a clear purpose but which recognises the need for flexibility given the complex and changing needs of London and the wider South East.

Visit the project website

Planning, value(s) and the market: An analytic for “What comes next?” – A paper on London boroughs fighting back on AirBnB and PDR

Staff involved: Nancy Holman, Director of Planning Studies; Alessandra Mossa, Oram Fellow; Erica Pani, Assistant Professor in Local Economic Development and Planning 

For 30 years planning has been attacked both rhetorically and materially in England as governments have sought to promote economic deregulation over land use planning. Our paper examines two new moments of planning deregulation. These are the loosening of regulation around short-term letting (STL) in London and the new permitted development rights (PDR), which allow for office to residential conversion without the need for planning permission. Whilst these may be viewed as rather innocuous reforms on the surface, they directly and profoundly illustrate how planners are often trapped between their legal duty to promote public values as dictated by national planning policy and the government’s desire to deregulate. We argue that viewing these changes through a value-based approach to economy and regulation illuminates how multiple and complex local values and understandings of value shape planners’ strategies and actions and thus vary national policies in practice. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how planners have, at least, the opportunity to develop a critical voice and to advocate for policy interpretations that can help to create better outcomes for local communities.

Visit the project website

Race, nature, and the remaking of Colombia’s Magdalena River

Staff involved: Austin Zeiderman

This research examines the work performed by “race” and “nature” in the context of large-scale technopolitical interventions. The geographical focus is Colombia’s Magdalena River, which is the primary waterway connecting the country’s Andean interior and Caribbean coast. The river has played an important role in the global histories of “nature” and “race,” and it is now the site of a major development project whose objective is to boost economic growth by resuscitating fluvial transport. Ethnographic fieldwork in the port-city of Barranquilla, in riverside towns, and on cargo vessels will reveal how this megaproject, which seeks to harness nature through technology in pursuit of progress, both reproduces and reconfigures Colombia’s racial and environmental orders.

Forthcoming publication: “In the Wake of Logistics: Situated Afterlives of Race and Labor on the Magdalena River.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

Traffic in the Americas

Staff involved: Austin Zeiderman

The collaboration will explore the varied relationships that exist between two different understandings of the word traffic. The first is vehicles moving on a road and the second is the trading in something illegal. The aim is to engage themes such as security, mobility, and infrastructure in the Americas from a novel perspective.

The participating units include the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, the Latin American and Caribbean Centre at LSE, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin, and the Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Desarrollo at the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia).

Visit the project website.

 

Recent Research  

Publications from our researchers

Publications from 2020 - present

2022

Zeiderman, Austin and Dawson, Kate (2022). Urban Futures. City. Read publication.

Sharp, Deen (2022). Concretising Conflict. The Journal of Architecture. Read publication.

Shin, Hyun Bang et al. (2022). COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: insights for a post-pandemic world. LSE Press, London, UK. Read publication

2021

Ferreri, Mara and Sanyal, Romola (2021). Digital informalisation: rental housing, platforms, and the management of risk. Housing Studies. Read publication

Centner, Ryan and Pereira Neto, Manoel (2021). Peril, privilege, and queer comforts: the nocturnal performative geographies of expatriate gay men in Dubai. Geoforum. Read publication.   

Koh, Sin Yee, Zhao, Yimin and Shin, Hyun Bang (2021). Moving the mountain and greening the sea: the micropolitics of speculative green urbanism at Forest City, Iskandar Malaysia. Urban Geography. Read publication.

Sharp, Deen (2021). Haphazard urbanisation: Urban informality, politics and power in Egypt. Urban Studies. Read publication.

Maqsood, Ammara and Sajjad, Fizzah (2021). ‘Victim, broker, activist, fixer: Surviving dispossession in working class Lahore’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Read publication.

Centner, Ryan (2021). A very Nordic set of concerns? Visionary circumspection & theoretical conversations with the rest of the world. Nordic Journal of Urban Studies. Read publication.

Speer, Jessie (2021). Subalternity as displacement: Memoirs of homelessness and the struggle to be heard’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Read publication.

Bertelli, Lucrecia (2021). What kind of global city? Circulating policies for ‘slum’ upgrading in the making of world-class Buenos Aires. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. Read publication.

Sanyal, Romola (2021). Making urban humanitarian policy: the “neighbourhood approach” in Lebanon. Urban Geography. Read publication.

Pietrostefani, Elisabetta and Holman, Nancy (2021). The politics of conservation planning: A comparative study of urban heritage making in the Global North and the Global South. Progress in Planning. Read publication.

Wei, Ran (2021). Tyrannical participation approaches in China’s regeneration of Urban heritage areas: a case study of baitasi historic district, Beijing. International Journal of Heritage Studies. Read publication.

2020

Zeiderman, Austin (2020). In the wake of logistics: Situated afterlives of race and labour on the Magdalena River. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Read publication

Pasquetti, Silvia and Sanyal, Romola (2020). Displacement: Global conversations on refuge. Manchester University Press. Read publication.

Shin, Hyun Bang, Zhao, Yimin and Koh, Sin Yee (2020). Whither progressive urban futures? Critical reflections on the politics of temporality in Asia. City. Read publication.

Centner, Ryan (2020). On not being Dubai: infrastructures of urban cultural policy in Istanbul & Beirut. International Journal of Cultural Policy. Read publication.

Speer, Jessie and Goldfischer, Eric (2020). The City Is not Innocent: Homelessness and the Value of Urban Parks. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. Read publication

Park, Se Hoon, Bang Shin, Hyun and Kang, Kang Soo (2020). Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience. Routledge. Read publication.

Zeiderman, Austin (2020). Concrete peace: building security through infrastructure in Colombia. Anthropological Quarterly. Read publication.

Sonn, Jung Won and Shin, Hyun Bang (2020). Contextualizing accumulation by dispossession: the state and high-rise apartment clusters in Gangnam, Seoul. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Read publication.

Mercer, Claire (2020). Boundary Work: Becoming Middle Class in Suburban Dar es Salaam. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Read publication.

Mercer, Claire and Lemanski, Charlotte (2020). The lived experiences of the African middle classes. Africa. Read publication.

Jones, Gareth et al. (2020). What does poverty feel like? Urban inequality and the politics of sensation. Urban Studies. Read publication.