China and India: Governance, urban development, and sustainability in the cities of the Global South

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The scholarship with regard to the process of urbanization in the context of globalization has been dominated by the "global cities" paradigm in which Saskia Sassen outlines the increasing centrality of cities as they become "command centers" in the expansion of global capitalism, destabilizing the older networks of governance that are embodied in the nation-state. As a result, much of the theorization on urbanization in the recent past has been focused on cities in the developed regions of the world such as New York, London and Tokyo that serve as the material and symbolic sites for global economic production. The cities of the developing countries therefore remain marginal to this theorization of the urban, either defined by the lack of full-scale globalization, or through processes that mimic the developments in the core, or as sites of increasing chaos, poverty and inequality.

This panel discussion brings together a diverse group of PhD students at UIC, from the fields of urban planning and design, criminal justice and public administration, conducting research in the cities of the global south. While their approaches might vary, they are all engaged in contributing to the production of knowledge on newly emerging global urban agglomerations and the concurrent shifts in the political economy, particularly urban governance. This reflects a demographic transformation of historical proportions wherein the majority of the world's urban dwellers will be in cities of the developing countries. Two-thirds of the world's urban population growth will be occurring in the cities of the developing regions of the world, bringing about rapid uneven distribution of incomes, the proliferation of slum cities, rising demand for urban infrastructure and investment -– physical and social. The discussants will debate some of the emerging contradictions and tensions faced by the cities of the global south and locate areas of further research. The thrust will be on the possibilities of constructing alternative theories of understanding this massive urban change.

Ratoola Kundu will be presenting on the transformations that take place at the urban fringes and the practices of informality that shape it and are in turn regulated by the policies of the local government as well as global flows of economic investment, using the case of the fringes of Kolkata in India as an illustration.

Kamna Lal will be investigating semi-formal institutional arrangement for delivery of urban environmental services in an Indian city and drawing out the changes in the relationship between political economy and the ecology of the city in a liberalizing environment.

Meng Sun’s presentation is on the possible material and social impacts of the Olympic 2008 summer games on the city of Beijing and the significance of "event" or spectacle driven development of urban centers.

Lan Wang will be dealing with the emergence of new global urban planning and design practices that are being rapidly transplanted into the New Towns of China's urban regions and the kinds of political, economic, socio-cultural changes that drive and are in turn shaped by these design practices of producing "global cities".

Barry Weisberg will be presenting on the need to reformulate an understanding of what constitutes safety and security with respect to urban populations and infrastructure of the mega cities in developing countries, focusing on Shanghai.