February 27, 2023

In Conversation: Tom Goodfellow + Pritish Behuria

53 minutes

In this episode Tom Goodfellow and Pritish Behuria discuss Tom's career and his new book, Politics and the Urban Frontier: Transformation and Divergence in Late Urbanizing East Africa.

Despite the rise of global technocratic ideals of city-making, cities around the world are not merging into indistinguishable duplicates of one another. In fact, as the world urbanizes, urban formations remain diverse in their socioeconomic and spatial characteristics, with varying potential to foster economic development and social justice. In his book, Tom Goodfellow argues that these differences are primarily rooted in politics, and if we continue to view cities as economic and technological projects to be managed rather than terrains of political bargaining and contestation, the quest for better urban futures is doomed to fail. Dominant critical approaches to urban development tend to explain difference with reference to the variegated impacts of neoliberal regulatory institutions. This, however, neglects the multiple ways in which the wider politics of capital accumulation and distribution drive divergent forms of transformation in different urban places.

Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Studies & International Development at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change.
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Politics and the Urban Frontier: Transformation and Divergence in Late Urbanizing East Africa.
Tom Goodfellow
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Pritish Behuria is Senior Lecturer in Politics, Governance & Development at the Global Development Institute. His research operates at the intersection of development studies, comparative politics and international political economy. He is a political economist, taking an interdisciplinary approach to studying the challenges associated with late development under 21st Century Globalisation.

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