(In)formality in a ‘Singapore-like Cebu’: paradoxes and contestations in world-class city-making
In this presentation, Dr Jordana Ramalho explores the politics and practices shaping contemporary urban (re)development and world-class city-making in the Philippines.
She focuses her analysis on the ongoing efforts to modernise Cebu City’s Carbon Market, one of the oldest and largest farmers markets in the archipelago. Emblematic of the ex-Mayor’s vision of creating a ‘Singapore-like Cebu’, this urban regeneration project has been fraught with controversy, including court cases, claims of corruption and elite capture, and sustained campaigns of resistance from an alliance of market vendors who support the revitalisation of the market, but oppose its privatisation. In tracing the story of Carbon Market, she interrogates the paradoxical logics and practices of (in)formality and (counter-)planning enmeshed in pursuits of the world-class city and reflect on the alternative socio-spatial imaginaries that emerge from these sites of tension. Notwithstanding the utility and relevance of neoliberal urbanism and gentrification theories to explaining some of the dynamics playing out in Carbon Market and Cebu City more generally, she consider what else the case of Carbon reveals about the current and future political economies of urban transformation in the Philippines.
Speaker & chair biographies
Dr. Jordana Ramalho is an Associate Professor in Development Planning for Diversity, and the Co-Director of the MSc Urban Development Planning (UDP) Programme at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London. Spanning the fields of urban geography, development studies and feminist urban political ecology, her research explores the socio-spatial trajectories of urban development, with a particular focus on disaster risk governance, resilience-building, urban regeneration, and the intersectional dynamics of dispossession, displacement and collective action that accompany them. She is currently leading currently leading a three year UKRI funded research project, Listen Learn & Leap, exploring the potential for nature-based solutions to advance equitable and sustainable forms of climate resilience in East African cities.
Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
*Banner photo by Zany Jadraque on Unsplash
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