Making
Slum-Free Cities: Global Urbanism in the Asian Century
Delivered
by Ananya Roy, Professor of City and Regional Planning and
Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at the University
of California, Berkeley.
Date:
16 May 2013
Time:
17h30 for 18h00 to 20h30
Venue:
Dorothy Susskind Auditorium, John Moffat Building, East Campus,
University
of the Witwatersrand
Programme:
-
18h00: Welcome and opening
-
Commemoration: ‘Drawing inspiration from Rusty Bernstein’ by Toni
Strasburg, award
winning
documentary filmmaker and writer, author of Fractured Lives, and
daughter of
Rusty
Bernstein
-
‘Making Slum-Free Cities: Global Urbanism in the Asian Century’
by Professor Ananya
Roy
-
Discussion
-
Vote of thanks
- 20h00:
Snacks and drinks in the John Moffat Foyer
Abstract
for Professor Ananya Roy’s Talk:
The
Asian Century can be understood as a historical conjuncture marked by
new formations of economic hegemony and bold claims of Asian
ascendancy. This talk examines how, at such a historical moment, the
urban question becomes the matter of government, and how in
particular, the megacity of slums is transformed into the Asian
world-class city. Taking up the example of India’s recent Slum-Free
Cities policy, which marks a break with hitherto dominant modes of
governing, the talk interrogates emerging paradigms of inclusive
growth, those that seek to integrate the poor into market rule and
capitalize the entrepreneurial slum. In this way, the talk tackles
the broader question of postcolonial government and its frontiers of
development, as well as the politics of poverty thus unleashed.
Ananya
Roy is Professor of City and Regional Planning and Distinguished
Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at the University of California,
Berkeley, where she teaches in the fields of urban studies and
international development. She also serves as Education Director of
the Blum Center for Developing Economies. Most recently, Roy served
as co-director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center. Roy is the
author of City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty
(University of Minnesota Press, 2003), co-editor of Urban
Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South
Asia, and Latin America (Lexington Books, 2004) and co-editor of The
Practice of International Health (Oxford University Press, 2008). Her
book, Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development
(Routledge, 2010), was the recipient of the 2011 Paul Davidoff Book
Award of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, a book
award for research that advances social justice. Roy's most recent
book is co-edited with Aihwa Ong and titled Worlding Cities: Asian
Experiments and the Art of Being Global (Blackwell, 2011). Roy is
currently involved in three collaborative projects of research and
practice: Urban Revolutions in the Age of Global Urbanism; The 21st
Century Indian City: Setting New Agendas for Policy; and Territories
of Poverty: Rethinking Welfare and
Development.
She is also launching a new book series with the University of
California Press to foster global and transnational agendas of
poverty and inequality scholarship.
