Events

This roundtable event is held in conjunction with Workshop Smart Cities in Global Comparative Perspective: Worlding and Provincializing Relationships; jointly organized by the University of Calgary, Singapore Management University, and the National University of Singapore.

Cities throughout the world are forged at the nexus of the particularities of place and processes that span the national, regional, and global scales. Whilst it is the particularities that render cities unique – and thus worthy of comparison – it is the processes that provide points of connection, and thus hold the promise of a more globally-oriented, and globally comparative, urban studies. Doing comparative research is, however, difficult to get right. Embracing the challenge, this roundtable discussion will consider “ways of doing” urban comparison that are methodologically and conceptually generative. Methodologically, it will consider how research is conceived; how fieldwork is scoped and conducted; how data is generated, analysed and written-up; and how and where it is published. Conceptually, it will explore the crossovers and affordances associated with a focus on smart cities, and how our categories hold a series of normative assumptions, epistemological promises, and theoretical blind spots. These characteristics cut across the places, paradigms, and platforms through which “smartness” and related framings are brought to bear on the city, thus providing an important and novel starting point from which discussion of the promises and pitfalls of comparative urban research can unfold. Finally, the roundtable will also consider how the COVID-19 “moment” might have provided the pause needed for not just cities, but also scholarship, to hit refresh and embrace new ways of thinking about, and doing, research in/on cities in the post-COVID era.

Moderator 
Orlando Woods | Singapore Management University

Panelists        
Jean-Paul Addie | Georgia State University
Kevin Ward | University of Manchester
Sarah Moser | McGill University
Shaun Teo | National University of Singapore

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Orlando Woods is Associate Professor of Geography and Lee Kong Chian Fellow in the College of Integrative Studies, Singapore Management University. His research interests span religion, infrastructure and urban environments in South and Southeast Asia. He is currently working on a MOE Tier 2 funded project on the development of smart cities in Southeast Asia, and the associated emergence of technocratic forms of regionalism.

Jean-Paul Addie is Associate Professor at the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University. He is an urban geographer with expertise in urban and regional governance, urban political economy, and socio-spatial theory. His current research examines the politics of infrastructure with a focus on questions of infrastructural regionalism and temporality.

Kevin Ward is Professor of Human Geography and Editor in Chief at Urban Geography.  His research interests center on comparative urbanism, municipal finance, policy mobility studies and urban governance.  He is author and editor of eleven books and author of over eighty book chapters and journal articles, including publications in Antipode, Environment and Planning A, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Geography and Urban Studies. 

Sarah Moser is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at McGill University where she is Director of the Urban Studies Program. Her research examines the global trend of new cities built from scratch, particularly in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Her recent work focuses on the cultural politics and geopolitics of new cities, the rhetoric used to promote and legitimize them, and the social exclusions that have resulted from new city projects and urban mega-developments. Her work has been published in journals such as Urban Studies, Area, Geoforum, Social & Cultural Geography, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, One Earth, Urban Geography, Cities, Geography Compass, and Habitat International.

Shaun Teo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. His research focuses on critical urban governance and politics in Asia. He is currently working on the incremental regeneration of informal settlements in urban China and on the intersections of temporary urbanism and placemaking in Singapore. Shaun is also interested in the methodological and tactical foundations of urban theorisation.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar have been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the talk.