Category: Uncategorised

People-led Development: interstitial practice and the production of differential spaces in Hanoi

In this event, Hoai Anh Tran presents key discussions in her recently published book People-led Development: Interstitial Practice and the Production of Differential Spaces in Hanoi (2026, Routledge), co-authored with Ngai-Ming Yip. Using Hanoi as a case study, the book explores city-making with a focus on activities carried out by ordinary people.

The book integrates the concept of interstitial practice with Lefebvre’s framework of the production of differential space to conceptualise the diverse and seemingly ad-hoc space-making activities of urban residents. These practices are situated in relation to the state’s disciplining projects through housing and urban planning. Moving beyond a simplistic, dichotomised discussion of informality and formality the book examines the tensions between state-driven visions of modernized urbanisation and everyday spatial practices of ordinary people. The book demonstrates how focusing on interstitial practices enables a more nuanced understanding of the diverse processes through which various forms differential spaces are produced.

By focusing on the more “ordinary components” of city-making that are often overlooked or neglected, the book highlights the spatial agency of ordinary people in responding to the imposition of state-sanctioned abstract spaces and the suppression of state social engineering. It argues that induced or minimal differential spaces, while fragmented and limited in scale, carry political significance. These spaces not only act as forms of resistance, but their accumulation also holds transformative potential.

This event is in collaboration with the Department of Geography and Environment, LSE.

Meet our speaker, discussants and chair

Hoai Anh Tran is an Associate Professor of Built Environment at the Department of Urban Studies, Malmö University, Sweden. Her research provides a critical analysis of the relationship between the state and society in urban space production, in the formulation and implementation of urban and housing policies, as well as the relationship between people and the built environment, with studies from Vietnam and Sweden. Her research topics include urban development policies and social justice, sustainable planning, urban space production, housing research, gentrification, everyday mobility, informality, and rhythm analysis.

Mara Nogueira is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London. She is an urban geographer with an interdisciplinary background in Geography and Economics and research expertise on urbanisation in the Global South with a focus on socio-spatial inequalities and grassroots mobilisation in Brazil. Her scholarship is committed to identifying the roots and ways of addressing socio-spatial inequalities with an aim to promote social justice. She is the Principal Investigator of the project Globalisation from below: livelihoods, trade and transnationalism in Brazil’s informal economy, funded by the British Academy.

Hanh-An Trinh is a PhD student at the Department of Geography & Environment at LSE. Her current research looks at the everyday imaginaries of urban futures, examining how the residents and workers anticipate and speculate on the futures of themselves and of their city.

Hyun Bang Shin (@urbancommune) is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK, Professor Shin has contributed to reshaping the understanding of contemporary urban transformation, emphasising the socio-political dynamics of cities in rapidly developing regions, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. From 2018 to 2023, he served as Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE, fostering interdisciplinary research on Asia. He was the Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from 2021 to 2024 and a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation from 2016 to 2023, contributing to global urban scholarship and mentorship. Since 2009, he has co-organised The Urban Salon, a London-based forum for architecture, cities, and international urbanism.

Registration

This event is free and open to all, but registration is required via Eventbrite.

More about this event

The Department of Geography and Environment (@LSEGeography) is a centre of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change.

The Urban Salon is a London-based forum for architecture, cities, and international urbanism.

Developing an Anti-Displacement Tool for the City of Louisville, KY

In 2023, the City of Louisville, Kentucky, passed an Anti-Displacement Ordinance, a major victory for the Louisville Tenants Union which was championed by progressive city council member Jecorey Arthur. This talk shares the process of implementing the next step of the policy: developing an Anti-Displacement Tool, which had to be approved by the City Council prior to use (it was passed in late 2024).

The tool’s aim is to mitigate the displacement that can occur from publicly subsidized housing projects. The tool will also serve as an online, open access resource for the public. The dashboard we developed for the tool innovates on two fronts: First, it combines data inputs about proposed residential projects together with multiple sources of data to create a measure of displacement risk in and around the area in which the proposed project is to be built. Through a statistical model the tool estimates the impact of the project on local rent levels and home values. Second, the tool uses these quantitative outputs (the measure of displacement risk) with a matrix that enables the City to say no to some proposed projects, or yes but with certain changes as a condition of funding. Read more.

Meet our speaker and chair

Professor Loretta Lees (@LorettaCLees) (MAE, FAcSS) is an urban geographer and urbanist who is internationally known for her research on gentrification, urban regeneration, global urbanism, urban policy, urban public space, and urban social theory. She is currently Director of the Initiative on Cities at Boston University and a visiting professor at Singapore Management University’s Urban Institute and in Geography & the Environment at LSE.

Since 2024 she has co-organised the Boston Urban Salon; she previously co-organised 2009-2022 The Urban Salon: A London forum for architecture, cities and international urbanism and 2016-22 the Leicester Urban Observatory. She was Chair of the London Housing Panel 2020-22 working with the Mayor of London.

She has published 18 books and nearly 80 journal articles. Her lastest book, co-authored with Elanor Warwick – Defensible Space: mobilisation in English Housing Policy and Practice was awarded the International Planning History Society (IPHS) Book Prize #1 2024. In 2023 she was ranked in the top 2% of most highly cited scholars internationally (Scopus, Elsevier, 2023). In 2022 she was awarded the Marilyn J. Gittell Activist Scholar Award by the Urban Affairs Association.

Professor Hyun Bang Shin (@urbancommune) is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Head of Department at the Department of Geography and Environment, LSE.

Sign-up and online registration 

Please sign-up for the event and/or register for online access via the Eventbrite link below: Developing an Anti-Displacement Tool for the City of Louisville, KY Tickets, Fri 20 Jun 2025 at 16:00 | Eventbrite

More about this event

The Department of Geography and Environment (@LSEGeography) is a center of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change.

This event is in collaboration with the Department of Sociology and The Urban Salon.

Cities and Multiple Nationalisms 

This event is part of a long-term engagement delineating the conceptual and practical boundaries concerning the impact of different forms of nationalism on the political geographies of cities. Increasing populist and authoritarian currents worldwide signal a growing urgency given the rise of tensions between cities and multiple forms of neo-nationalism. The speakers will explore how and in what ways nationalism possess the potential to influence the nature of urbanisation in the Middle East, Ukraine and India, as they interact in the remaking of global urban studies.

Event Schedule*: Start 5.30pm

Urban Salon Welcome (Phil Hubbard, Kings College London)

Introduction & Chair (Jonathan Rock Rokem, Northeastern University London)

Speakers:

Bulldozer Hindutva: Ethnonationalist scapegoating and Cumulative Eviction Logics 

(Liza Weinstein, Northeastern University Boston)

Military Frontline Cities 

(Michael Gentile, University of Oslo)

Polarizations: when Neo-nationalism meets Global Urbanism 

(Oren Yiftachel, BGU & University College London)

Discussant: Jenny Robinson (University College London)

Q&A

Drinks 7.30pm

*Please register for the event via Eventbrite link below and bring proof of identity document or a photo of your ID on mobile. Pre-registration and ID is required by security at the entrance: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/urban-salon-cities-and-multiple-nationalisms-tickets-1302986249949?aff=oddtdtcreator

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About the Participants

Liza Weinstein is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University Boston. She is editor of International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), and is currently completing a book titled, The Logics of Dispossession: Local Histories of India’s “World Class” Evictions, which analyses the shifting politics of housing insecurity and anti-eviction activism across urban India. She is also leading a National Science Foundation-funded study on the intersection of legal exclusion, embodiment, and territorial stigma in non-notified communities in Mumbai.

Michael Gentile is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oslo and associate editor of Eurasian Geography and Economics. He has worked with various themes related to Central and Eastern Europe, including housing, socio-spatial differentiation and, more recently, urban geopolitics. His current regional focus is on Ukraine and he is principal investigator of the Norwegian Research Council project Ukrainian Geopolitical Fault-line Cities: Urban Identities, Geopolitics and Urban Policy.

Oren Yiftachel is an (emeritus) Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Political and Legal Geography, at BGU, Beersheba, and a Prof. (hon) of Geography and Planning at University College London. In a wide range of publications his work has focused on critical understandings of the relations between space, power, inequality and conflict. He uses international comparative research, theoretical development and a focus on Israel/Palestine. Yiftachel is also a social and political activist who is member of several organizations working for social justice, equality and peace, mainly with indigenous and marginalized groups.

From wastelands to islands of waste: Journeys through marginal spaces in Tokyo and London

The margins of the late-modern metropolis have long formed a somewhat ambiguous site for environmental and social scientists alike. 

In this Urban Salon event we embark on a journey from the wastelands of London to the islands of waste in Tokyo. Along the way we will chart the complex ecological, social, cultural and political geometries of urban interstice, while offering a comparative approach which moves beyond Anglo/Eurocentric accounts of marginal spaces.

About the Participants

Kumiko Kiuchi is Associate Professor at Institute for Liberal Arts, Institute of Science Tokyo. She completed her DPhil. at University of Sussex in English Literature. She has published a number of articles on modernism in Europe (especially on genre and intersemiotic translation) and a regular contributor to the English literary magazine SNOW. She was the project manager of ‘Screening Patrick Keiller’s Robinson Trilogy in Japan’ and an editor and contributor to the booklet Landscapes in Time:Patrick Keiller’s  ‘Robinson Trilogy (2015). She is currently working on a comparative study on the narratological and geopolitical functions of rivers and bridges in films featuring London and Tokyo.

Ben Platt is a ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is primarily a cultural geographer with interests in landscape, aesthetics and power. His PhD research explored emerging approaches to landscape urbanism in East London – with particular focus on marginal spaces and ruderal ecologies. Ben has also written on the notion of weird geographies and ecologies. 

Matthew Gandy is Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Kings College Cambridge. He is a cultural, urban, and environmental geographer with particular interests in landscape, infrastructure, and more recently bio-diversity. His most recent book Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space is winner of a 2023 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize awarded by the Foundation for Landscape Studies and UVA School of Architecture. He has also directed documentary films including the award-winning Natura Urbana: the Brachen of Berlin.

Reserve your space here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/from-wastelands-to-islands-of-waste-tickets-1217780216409?aff=oddtdtcreator

Walking as method

The study of walking is located somewhere between literary criticism, with its interest in the sensory realm of the modern subject, and a variety of ground-level interpretations of cultural and material practices. 

In this urban salon event we explore how the simple act of walking can serve as an entry point for diverse perspectives on space, society, and the modern self.

About the Participants

Matthew Gandy is Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Kings College Cambridge. He is a cultural, urban, and environmental geographer with particular interests in landscape, infrastructure, and more recently bio-diversity. His most recent book Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space is winner of a 2023 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize awarded by the Foundation for Landscape Studies and UVA School of Architecture. He has also directed documentary films including the award-winning Natura Urbana: the Brachen of Berlin.

Phil Hubbard is Professor of Urban Studies at King’s College London. He has published widely on questions of class, gentrification and the impacts of urban policy on socially marginalised populations. His books include Cities and Sexualities, The Battle for the High Street, and Key Ideas in Geography: City.

Clare Qualmann is an Associate Professor at the University of East London, and an artist/researcher with an interdisciplinary performance based practice. From a background in the visual arts her work engages a range of participatory methods, and a range of media to explore and reveal the overlooked – the politics and potentials of everyday life.

James Vigus is a Senior Lecturer in Romanticism at Queen Mary. His research focuses the literature and philosophy of the period of European Romanticism, especially the early reception of German thought in Britain, with particular emphasis on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Henry Crabb Robinson.

Reserve your space here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-as-method-tickets-1037695594457

Borderland: Identity and belonging at the edge of England

Please join us at our next event to mark the launch of Phil Hubbard’s latest book: Borderland: Identity and belonging at the edge of England. 

The event will include reflections on the book from the author and discussions by experts in the fields of cultural and historical geography, urban studies, and social anthropology. 

Book Description

Over recent years, the issues of Brexit, COVID and the ‘migrant crisis’ put Kent in the headlines like never before. Images of asylum seekers on Kent beaches, lorries queued on motorways and the crumbling white cliffs of Dover all spoke to national anxieties, and were used to support ideas that severing ties with the EU was the best – or worst – thing the UK has ever done.

In this coastal driftwork, Phil Hubbard – an exiled man of Kent – considers the past, present and future of this corner of England, alighting on a number of key sites which symbolise the changing relationship between the UK and its continental neighbours. Moving from the geopolitics of the Channel Tunnel to the cultivation of oysters at Whitstable, from Derek Jarman’s feted cottage at Dungeness to the art-fuelled gentrification of Margate, Borderland bridges geography, history, and archaeology, to pose important questions about the way that national identities emerge from contested local landscapes.

“A powerful, poignant and beautifully written journey through the frontier lands of Brexit Britain. This is travel writing with a purpose, charting an anxious and often hostile landscape with care and passion.” Alastair Bonnett, author of The Age of Islands: In Search of New and Disappearing Islands

About the Participants

Phil Hubbard is Professor of Urban Studies at King’s College London. He has published widely on questions of class, gentrification and the impacts of urban policy on socially marginalised populations. His books include Cities and Sexualities, The Battle for the High Street, and Key Ideas in Geography: City.

Matthew Gandy is Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Kings College Cambridge. He is a cultural, urban, and environmental geographer with particular interests in landscape, infrastructure, and more recently bio-diversity. His most recent book Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space is winner of a 2023 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize awarded by the Foundation for Landscape Studies and UVA School of Architecture. He has also directed documentary films including the award-winning Natura Urbana: the Brachen of Berlin.

Yasminah Beebeejaun is a Professor of Urban Politics and Planning at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her work is concerned with feminist and anti-racist approaches to planning theory and practice. Her articles have been published in many journals including Environment and Planning C, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Planning Theory, Planning Theory and Practice, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. She is co-editor of The Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City.

Farhan Samanani is a Lecturer in Social Justice in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College London. His work explores how people build forms of connection, understanding and common cause across lines of meaningful difference, in the contemporary UK. He works closely and collaboratively with communities on issues ranging from racial justice, to accessible cities, to climate change, seeking to understand and support everyday efforts to build a better future. His most recent book is entitled How To Live With Each Other: An Anthropologist’s Notes on Sharing a Divided World. 

Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space by Matthew Gandy 

Speakers: 

Matthew Gandy (University of Cambridge)

Harriet Bulkeley (Durham University)

Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam)

Erik Swyngedouw (University of Manchester)

Discussant:

Phil Hubbard (King’s College, London)

Chair:

Jenny Robinson (University College London)

Register here.

The Urban Salon is delighted to host the launch of Matthew Gandy’s new book, Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space (MIT, 2022). Matthew draws together different strands of urban ecology as well as insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought to explore the “other nature” that flourishes in marginal urban spaces, at one remove from the controlled contours of metropolitan nature. This is not the poor relation of rural flora and fauna. As he notes, these islands of biodiversity underline the porosity of the distinction between urban and rural, which he explores through close attention to diverse cultures of nature at a global scale.

Matthew Gandy (University of Cambridge) will present his new book which will be followed by a panel discussion and then a Q&A with the audience. 

Matthew Gandy is Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Concrete and Clay and The Fabric of Space, both published by MIT Press.