Date and time
Monday 30th April
6 pm (BST)
Location
UCL Geography Exhibition Room, Pearson Building G07 (see www.ucl.ac.uk/locations/ucl-maps)
International circulation and social construction of urban policy models: The case of City Improvement Districts in Johannesburg
Speaker
Elisabeth Peyroux (National Centre for Scientific Research, Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Studies (LISST-Cieu), University of Toulouse II)
Discussant(s)
Dr Murray Low, LSE Geography
Abstract: The international circulation of ‘models’ is at the heart of many theoretical and methodological debates raised by the literature on ‘urban policy mobility’. Based on the example of the North American model of Business Improvement District and the case study of Johannesburg, this presentation draws on this literature to investigate the ways in which the BID model is socially constructed through its international circulation and its local embeddedness. Using discourse analysis as a complementary approach it throws light on the ways in which this model is reinterpreted at a local scale, in particular through processes of decontextualisation and recontextualisation, as part of various entrepreneurial strategies.
