The 91̽»¨ Urbanism Lecture series is an initiative of the Urban Institute to stimulate dialogue, discussion and understanding of processes of urbanization and urban life. It is intended as a space to reimagine both the conceptualizations and narratives of urban studies.
The 2024 lecture series will build from the UI’s theme Infrastructure in Action and the European Research Council funded project GlobalCORRIDOR with lectures and dialogues led by Dr Jonathan Silver (University of 91̽»¨) alongside a series of collaborators.
Global Corridor: Techno-Territorial Constellations on a Transforming Planet
The planet is entering a new era of restructuring through the rapid proliferation of global infrastructure projects that are bundled together into programs that have come to be termed corridors. Across every region of the globe these technological-led, territorial initiatives are being planned, financed, constructed and operated at unprecedented speed and scale by a multitude of intermediaries. What this means for how we think through the urban question remains to be fully addressed. In this lecture series Dr Jonathan Silver sets out to critically examine the ways infrastructure corridors are restructuring multi-scalar geographies from global urbanisation through to the everyday, lived experience of city dwellers. Doing so opens a set of challenges and opportunities about how we might collectively develop an urban theory of these massive transformations into the future.
Lecture One: The Multiple Urban Histories of the Corridor
6th November 15.15-17.00, In person and online
Dr Jonathan Silver will open the lecture series reflecting on the history of corridors, with particular attention to the dynamic, historical relations between trade, technology and urban growth across extended time/space. Drawing on a collective research process he will demonstrate the critical role of infrastructure in the history of urbanisation across various eras of world trade, including thinking closely through classical era Athens, Mughal era Lahore, mediaeval Mombasa and industrial Manchester. The lecture will then shift to critically examine the ways in which corridors have become a critical tool in planning regimes across different global regions, particularly over the last century. Finally, Silver will mobilise this historical perspective to question how urban studies is grappling with these overlapping, complex initiatives in the contemporary era through multiple different models, concepts and approaches.
The lecture will be chaired by Professor Beth Perry
Lecture Two: Corridor Urbanisation: A New Global Geography?
13th November 15.15-17.00, In person and online
In the second lecture Dr Jonathan Silver will consider how new corridors initiatives are challenging our ways of knowing and researching the urban. Drawing on a developing database of over 70 multi-modal, cross border corridor initiatives he proposes the need to think about the dynamic of corridor urbanisation as a critical trajectory in the production of urban-regional space. The lecture will explore different perspectives on how urban studies can interrogate this urbanisation process from the geo-political to the economic before arguing for the necessity of an urban infrastructural perspective in extending critical orientations towards these dynamics. This involves thinking through the various investments that constitute the broader constellations of corridor initiatives and the urban geographies through which these infrastructures intersect including ports and hinterlands, railways and roads, real estate enclaves and zones, energy generation schemes and digital technologies.
The lecture will be chaired by Dr Yannis Kallianos
Dialogue: The Global Urbanisms of the Corridor
27th November 15.15-17.00 online only
In the third part of the series Dr Jonathan Silver will be joined by a series of collaborators from the GlobalCORRIDOR project. The session will focus on a comparative dialogue that will reflect upon the intersections of corridors and urban life across various global regions including the Mediterranean, East Africa and South Asia. Drawing on extensive fieldwork investigations the dialogue will interrogate the urbanisms that surround and suffuse the making of large-scale infrastructure corridors. Participants will explore the ways in which urban inhabitation becomes both threatened by and tied to these techno-territorial initiatives, alongside the emerging contestations, negotiations and navigations that exist as a lived experience within and adjacent to the space of the corridor.
The dialogue will be co-chaired by Dr Jonathan Silver, Dr Zhengli Huang and Dr Yannis Kallianos who will be joined by a series of collaborators from Greece, Italy, Kenya and Pakistan including:
- Dr Catherine Gateri (British Institute of East Africa),
- Wairimu Gathimba (British Institute of East Africa)
- Spyros Gerousis (Independent researcher/filmmaker),
- Dr Alberto Valz Gris (Politecnico di Torino)
- Dr Pafsanias Karathanasis (Independent researcher)
- Dr Hara Kouki (Crete University)
- Toheed Mohammed (Karachi Urban Lab)
- Dr Fatima Tassadiq (University of 91̽»¨)