Urban Knowledge Network Asia - Fellows Presentations
Thursday between 2-4 p.m. three fellows of the 'Urban Knowledge Network Asia' (UKNA) present their ongoing research. Shrawan Acharya will talk about urban poverty and revitalisation in Indian metropolis Ahmedabad, while Deng Zhituan and Lena Scheen address aspects of economic and urban transformations in Shanghai.
During this afternoon, three UKNA fellows will present their ongoing research.
Dr. Shrawan Acharya | CEPT University: Urban Poverty and Revitalization in Globalizing Metropolis –Ahmedabad, India
Dr. Deng Zhituan | SASS: The Economic Development and the Restructure of the Urban Space in Shanghai after 1949
Dr. Lena Scheen | IIAS: Shanghai: Literary Imaginings of a City in Transformation
About UKNA
Consisting of over 100 researchers from 13 institutes in Europe, China, India and the United States, the object of the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) is to nurture contextualised and policy-relevant knowledge on Asian cities today. UKNA is funded by the EU and coordinated by IIAS.
Urban Poverty and Revitalization in Globalizing Metropolis –Ahmedabad, India
Dr. Shrawan Acharya | CEPT University
Urban areas are important change agents in the growth and diversification of India due to the opening up of economy to global market forces and processes under the neo liberal economic policies from the early nineties. Modernization of cities modeled on the western proto types are being promoted and emulated to get international recognition and achieve global aspirations. The growth impulses generated by such global processes are however not in conformity with the entrenched structural inequalities of Indian cities which creates contradictions and conflicts in urban area. One such conflict is between urban poverty and urban revitalization. Many cities in India are embarking on urban revitalization initiatives to be competitive and attract investments to become global cities in the post reform period. Large scale capital intensive development projects are being undertaken to beautify and modernize cities. However the social and environmental costs of such projects are not internalized in the planning process. Though the development planning discourse and planning policies discuss “inclusive development” in reality the processes are more exclusionary despite the existence of successful decentralized participatory project in urban India like the “Slum Networking” in Ahmedabad. In most of the cases the negative externalities and social cost are borne by the poor and the marginalized. The paper will present and highlight the interplay of these dichotomies in Ahmedabad, a rapidly growing megapolis in western India, and reflect on the issues that result from these contradictory developments in emerging India and the need to engage in evolving more inclusive, bottom up and incremental approach to city development strategies.
The Economic Development and the Restructure of the Urban Space in Shanghai after 1949
Dr. Deng Zhituan | Shanghai Academy for Social Sciences, Center for Urban and Regional Studies
From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Since economic liberalization began in 1978, China's investment- and export-led economy has grown almost a hundredfold and is the fastest-growing major economy in the world.
Shanghai is the commercial and financial center of mainland China. It was the largest and most prosperous city in the Far East during the 1930s, changed after the New China founded in 1949, and became the most important industries center of China before 1990, then rapid re-development began in 1990s. In the last two decades Shanghai has been one of the fastest developing cities in the world ,recorded double-digit growth since 1992.
The rapid economic development resulted in the rapid agglomeration of the population. This is exemplified by the Pudong District, which became a pilot area for integrated economic reforms. All of these significantly has changed the structure of urban space in Shanghai, especially the redistribution of population and the restructure of the industries space.
Shanghai: Literary Imaginings of a City in Transformation
Dr. Lena Scheen | International Institute for Asian Studies
Shanghai is a city in flux. In recent years, workers and machines have frantically destroyed large parts of the city to build a new one. But the mental maps and personal memories of its citizens are not as easily erased. Hence a skyscraper designed to meet the growing demand for office property may symbolize the city’s booming economy to some, while to others the sight of this very building may bring back childhood memories of the old neighborhood it replaced, becoming a symbol of lost youth and vanishing ways of life. It is precisely through literary imaginings that the citizens’ experience of Shanghai’s transformation is revealed: the city of feeling rising out of the city of fact. This presentation will discuss fiction set in contemporary Shanghai, written by Shanghainese writers. How do local writers depict the fast-changing city they live in?
Please join us
Would you like to join? Please send an email to Simone Bijlard s.f.bijlard@iias.nl before 5 December..