Dear Colleagues,
Karen Bacon and I are pleased to be the new convenors of the Leeds School of Geography Seminars on the physical geography and human geography side, respectively. These seminars are meant to be intellectually and socially inclusive, so we give all members of staff and interested colleagues and students a warm welcome.
This year we will kick off with a talk on economic transition, speculative urbanism and accumulation by dispossession in China by Dr Hyun Bang Shin. Shin holds the position of Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Studies in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Please find his staff profile here: [log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]
ABSTRACT
Is China gentrifying? Economic transition, speculative urbanism and accumulation by dispossession
Geography Lecture Theatre, Geography East Building (location details below)
Wednesday 12 February 2014, 5-6PM
Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In China which has gone through transition from a planned to a market economy, it is necessary to unleash decommodified properties, such as public housing estates and lands, to make them no longer entangled with the legacy of China's planned economy. This also means inhabitants' dispossession to dissociate them from claiming their use rights to the properties and their right to their original neighbourhoods. This paper argues that while China's urban redevelopment may have produced 'gentrification-effects' similar to 'new-build gentrification', a large number of redevelopment projects have been targeting dilapidated urban spaces that are yet to be fully converted into commodities, and this process can be better analysed from the perspective of accumulation by dispossession. The use of the latter perspective exposes the exploitative nature of the state in China, where dispossession precedes and is a precursor to gentrification.
DIRECTIONS
All seminars are held in the School of Geography Lecture Theatre. This can be found in the Geography East Building, University of Leeds. If you find the car park in the centre of this Google Maps image at http://goo.gl/DbxKBC, the Geography East Building is the building on the right of it. Enter from the car park, and follow the right-hand wall to reach the Lecture Theatre. Instructions for getting to the University, and for visitor car parking, can be found here: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/info/20014/about/157/how_to_find_us.
Dr Karen Bacon & Dr Martin Zebracki
Convenors, Leeds School of Geography Seminars
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Dr M.M. (Martin) Zebracki
Lecturer in Critical Human Geography
School of Geography
University of Leeds
University Road
Leeds LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/m.zebracki
http://twitter.com/zebracki
http://www.zebracki.org
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