Annual Lecture

Read and view past and forthcoming annual lectures

Annual Lectures

2024

USJ Annual Lecture 2024 advert

Urban metabolism redux

Professor Matthew Gandy presented the 2024 Annual Lecture, “Urban metabolism redux”, at the RGS-IBG conference in London.

 

Abstract

Metabolic readings of urban space point in at least four different analytical directions: the post-war machinic city of techno futurism, modelling, and managerial control, extending to interest in materials flow analysis, industrial metabolism, and neo-Luhmannian interest in autopoietic dimensions to spatial complexity; recent elaborations of the classic nineteenth-century analysis of metabolic rift via Liebig and Marx; an emphasis on the city of flows emerging from the mutual entanglement of capital, the human body, and a variety of material infrastructures, developing in particular under the aegis of neo-Marxian urban studies from the 1990s onwards; and more recent frameworks that emphasise the co-existence of multiple metabolic pathways, the presence of multispecies metabolic entanglements, and multiscalar conceptions of urbanisation.  In this presentation I will explore the possibilities for a conceptual synthesis that might contribute towards an embodied, multi-subjectival, and historically situated reading of urban space.

2023

2023 Annual Lecture – Professor Jennifer Robinson

Professor Jennifer Robinson presents the 2023 Urban Studies Annual Lecture, “Dimensions of Urban Development Politics: Transcalarity, Circuits, Territories”. This lecture was chaired by Doctor Karen Coelho at Urban ARC.

2022

2022 Annual Lecture – Professor Karen Seto

Professor Karen Seto presents the 2022 Urban Studies Annual Lecture, “21st Century Urbanisation and Grand Challenges for Global Sustainability”. This lecture was chaired by Professor Yingling Fan at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference.

2021

2021 Annual Lecture – Professor Edward Glaeser

Professor Edward Glaeser presents the 2021 Urban Studies Annual Lecture “Cities in an Age of Pandemic”.

2020

Professor Sharon Zukin was selected to present the 2020 Urban Studies Annual Lecture “Planetary Silicon Valley: Deconstructing New York’s innovation complex” but unfortunately due to COVID-19 the AAG conference was cancelled.

Read the paper here and view the related video here.

2019

To extend: Temporariness in a world of itineraries

Dr AbdouMaliq Simone presented the 2019 Urban Studies Annual Lecture “To extend: Temporariness in a world of itineraries” at the RGS-IBG conference.

Read the open access paper here.

2018

Neighbourhood effects and beyond: Explaining the paradoxes of inequality in the changing American metropolis

Professor Robert J Sampson presented the 2018 Urban Studies Annual Lecture “Neighbourhood effects and beyond: Explaining the paradoxes of inequality in the changing American metropolis” at the AAG conference.

Read the paper here.

2017

2017 Urban Studies Annual Lecture – Professor Lily Kong & Orlando Woods

Professor Lily Kong presents the 2017 Urban Studies Annual Lecture, “The Ideological Alignment of Smart Urbanism In Singapore: Critical Reflections on a Political Paradox”.

Read the lecture here.

2016

2016 Urban Studies Annual Lecture – Jamie Peck

In 2016 the Urban Studies AAG lecture “Transatlantic City” was delivered by Prof. Jamie Peck and was chaired by Andrew Cumbers.

Read the lecture here:

Transatlantic city, part 1: Conjunctural urbanism

Transatlantic city, part 2: Late entrepreneurialism