Progressing Planning

This episode was recorded before the events of October 2023. 

In this episode, we speak to Palestinian geographer and PhD holder, Muna Dajani. Dajani's research focuses on documenting water struggles in agricultural communities under settler colonialism, as well as working on issues of environmental justice and green energy colonialism. Our discussion explores some of her research interests, focusing on the role of urban resource management, and how power asymmetries and discriminatory practises manifest in resource management planning. Additionally, we discuss the challenges of conducting research under these practices, touching on the decolonisation of knowledge production, as well as Dajani's efforts to document the collective memory of local land and agricultural practices in the fight against climate change.

In this episode we speak to Mara Ferreri, Assistant Professor in Economic and Political Geography at Polytechnic of Turin. Her research focuses on housing precarity, temporary and platform urbanism, and struggles for housing commoning. In her recently published book, The Permanence of Temporary Urbanism: Normalizing Precarity in Austerity London, she draws on seven years of semi-ethnographic research to highlight the material and cultural dynamics of temporary urbanism in the context of capitalism, particularly the gentrification processes that are currently occurring in the city. Here, Mara provides an in-depth account of the complex phenomenon of property guardianship in the UK and helps draw out potential learnings for the way forward for progressing planning in this context.

In this episode we talk to Melissa Weihmayer, PhD candidate in Regional and Urban Planning Studies at LSE, currently researching on internally displaced people and refugees.

Here, Melissa investigates the particular relationship that cities have with the notion of displacement and the different levels of policies (national, local) being mobilised in this context. In this podcast, Melissa also tells us about her experience in Ukraine and her current research on London.

In this episode we are joined by Dr. Callum Ward, LSE fellow in Urban Planning and Geography. In his research, Callum uses urban political theory to help better understand contemporary economic and political processes that affect cities and citizens. In the podcast, Callum discusses his recently published article on Antwerp's planning policy in a context of neoliberal urban governance and aggressive land-financialisation.

In this episode, Fizzah Sajjad, Pakistani urban planner and researcher, discusses the effects of state-led displacement within working class communities in Lahore and Colombo.

Fizzah holds a masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a specialization in International Development Planning, and is currently pursuing her PhD in Human Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics.

In this episode, we chat with Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, an American urban anthropologist, founder and director at THINK.urban.

She studies heart centered cities, in which a care mentality comes first, and focuses on a more humanistic approach to the building of cities.

In this episode, Emma Spruce, Teaching Fellow in Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights at the Department of Gender Studies (LSE) talks about their research on queer spaces in London with a focus on Brixton. 

In particular, they discuss the role of sexual progress narratives and experiences of LGBTQ+ sexuality in contemporary debates on urban change and urban activism in London.

Catriona Riddell is the Director of Catriona Riddell & Associates Ltd and former Director of Planning of the South East England Partnership Board.

In  this episode, Catriona explores the role of strategic planning in achieving good growth moving away from standard measures. In particular, she discusses the 2011 Localism Act, its consequences for Local Governments, cooperation between local authorities and duty to cooperate, strategic planning opportunities such as the London Stansted Cambridge Corridor and Thames Estuary.

Emma Spruce is a Teaching Fellow at the Department of Gender Studies, at the London School of Economics. Floriane Ortega is a manager at the Carbon Trust, an international consultancy helping businesses, governments and local authorities to reduce their carbon emissions.

In this episode, Emma and Floriane explore and question the links between gender inequalities and urban resilience, discussing how gendered power relations play out in urban spaces and how they might increase in the aftermath of disaster.

In our fourth podcast in the Progressing Planning series, Meera Kumar, project officer at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA), explores NJEDA's response to the Covid-19 crisis and looks at ideas on how to efficiently support the economy in difficult times. 

This podcast also discusses the role of NJEDA as an economic booster for Black and LatinX business owners and entrepreneurs, helping in accessing public and private capital and thinking how NJ cities can benefit from such investments.

In this podcast, Dr Jessie Speer Assistant Professor in Human Geography at the London School of Economics delves into exclusionary property law in the US, looking at the “legal fiction of property law” to explore the insidious nature of a framework that centers on the right to exclude. 

She also talks about her book project, stressing the urgent humanity crisis around demolitions and insufficient anti-homeless policies. Jessie uses intersectionality to approach the plurality of housing experiences and the critical importance of including voices that are too often overlooked in theory and policymaking. She leaves us with her take on what she sees as a potential way forward in achieving fairer urban environments.

Our first guest for this series of podcasts exploring how urban planning is fostering change in contemporary society was Lindiwe Rennert, a transport planner and PhD student in the department or Geography and Environment at the LSE.

In this episode, we talked about the role transport planning carries in shaping our cities, particularly exploring themes of race, property value and access to services. We also discussed the case for reparation and the importance of increasing access to opportunities for Black communities through public transport provision.