Activity canceled: Research Seminar: Exploring the links between infrastructure-led development, urban transformation, and inequality in the New Silk Road

Next Tuesday, June 27th will take place the Research Seminar: Exploring the links between infrastructure-led development, urban transformation, and inequality in the New Silk Road, this seminar is part of the Formative Activities of the PhD in Geography of the academic year 2022-2023.

Abstract
In this talk, we will discuss the links between infrastructure-led development, urban transformation and inequality in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). By drawing on postcolonial geographies, my goal is to offer a relational analysis of divergent trajectories of socio-spatial urban change driven by BRI projects in Athens, Chancay, Colombo, Kathmandu and London. My key argument is that urban transformation driven by the BRI signals the emergence of a new form of infrastructure-led urbanisation. This engenders both new urban formations and new urban politics that, despite variegated expressions across different contexts, are reconfiguring urban space and are transforming the social geography of each city by creating, facilitating or exacerbating social, environmental, and spatial inequality.

Elia Apostolopoulou, currently at ICTA; she holds an R&C and has been attached to the Dept. of Geography at Cambridge University. She is editor of the journal "Dialogues in Human Geography". She works on issues of economic geography and urban geography from a critical perspective and in recent years has been very interested in the Chinese New Belt and Road program on the massive Chinese investments around the world and how these are reshaping cities and territories on a global scale. You can view her CV at: https://www.bcnuej.org/elia-apostolopoulou/

(All activities are free of charge. Participants will receive a certificate of participation corresponding to 100% of the attendance).

Contact person (registrations and certifications): Alba Palma (alba.palma@uab.cat).