This seminar is hosted by the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, an Oxford Martin School Programme

Speaker: Dr Pow Choon Piew, Associate Professor of Urban Geography, National University of Singapore

Summary: Contemporary urban studies literature is often overwhelmed by dismal stories of urban segregation and the privatization of the city. Much of this ‘critical’ urban scholarship suffers from a form of theoretical determinism that views cities and urban spaces as helpless pawns being assailed by global forces of neoliberal privatism. This seminar takes issue with such dystopian views that have come to characterize research on privatized urban forms such as gated communities.

Biography: Pow holds a PhD from UCLA and is the author of the book Gated Communities in China: Class, Privilege and the Moral Politics of the Good Life, published by Routledge (2009). He is currently an academic visitor based at the Oxford China Centre.

Venue: 64 Banbury Road, Oxford

Urban Feast seminars are open to all, there is no need to book a place