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The urban politics of infra-density: From authoritarianism to new populism
Urban density has been catalysing authoritarian, populist and other modes of urban politics in our urban now-here. We have been witnessing not only the target of population control (23 million) in the urban master plan of Beijing that has been inducing large-scale demolition and displacement, but also the stubborn slogan of the SVP, which just got overwhelming victory in Swiss elections, that claims “Keine 10-Millionen-Schweiz!”
With these observations, we may wonder: how is urban density politicised and with what discursive and material mechanisms at work? What are the roles of urban infrastructures in enabling, sustaining and intensifying such political dynamics? How are these urban dynamics in turn associated with further political agendas of authoritarian, (new) populist and other regimes on the one hand and, on the other, the everyday life of urban subjects that has been affected heavily by this process? Drawing on recent literature on the urban political, urban-state nexus and urban density, this symposium aims to foreground infra-density as an analytical lens to interrogate the infrastructuralisation of urban densities and the (power) density of urban infrastructures.
The rationale of the symposium is to bring together researchers working on urban densities and urban infrastructures into dialogues with each other, so as to develop the analytical power of infra-density in authoritarian, populist and other contexts.
Time: 14 December 2023, 14:00-18:20, followed by an Apéro
Venue: KOL-H-317, City Campus, UZH
Convenors: Dr. Yimin Zhao & Prof. Dr. Hanna Hilbrandt
Host: Social and Cultural Geography (SoKu), GIUZ, University of Zurich
