Events

On 10 May, Federico Cugurullo (Trinity College Dublin), spoke with us about his work on urban Artificial intelligence, focusing on his most recent book, Artificial Intelligence and the City: Urbanistic Perspectives on AI, edited with Federico Caprotti (Exeter), Matthew Cook (Open), Andrew Karvonen (Lund), Pauline McGuirk (Wollongong) and Simon Marvin (Sheffield and Sydney). The talk covered both the key contributions of the book, and especially its exploration of the move from automated to autonomous urban systems, and the collaborative process of putting the book together via virtual workshops and other means.

Exeter Urban/Geography Seminar - The urbanisation of violence and conflict: Urbicide in the Arab World Dr. Deen Sharp (Visiting Fellow, LSE), May 9, 2024

Throughout the Arab region, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen, a profound urban devastation of historic proportions has unfolded. The scale of destruction echoes the grim landscapes of World War Two, surpassing mere military targets to engulf entire residential neighbourhoods in ruin. This phenomenon of the deliberate obliteration of the built environment, termed urbicide, stands as a pivotal concept in contemporary political geography. In the first segment of this talk, I will provide an overview of the extent of urbicidal practices, understood as the deliberate destruction of the built environment, that are present throughout the region from Gaza to Syria, Sudan to Yemen, underscoring the breadth and depth of this crisis. Subsequently, through these cases of urbicide and urban warfare, I argue for a paradigm shift in conceptualizing urbicide and the broader urbanisation of conflict. This shift entails not only scrutinizing instances of urban destruction but also how the construction and planning of urban spaces can become part of the conduct of warfare. From erecting barriers and building walls to the provision of basic urban services and even practices of reconstruction, all elements of urbanisation can become entangled in the dynamics of conflict, as both tools of war and targets of destruction. This proposition holds implications for our understanding of active conflict participants and what defines urban conflict, urging a re-evaluation of traditional frameworks and approaches.

This event featured a cross-disciplinary panel of Exeter academics discussing topics ranging from the Roman period to the present, from histories of cinematic flight to everyday commuting.

Panelists

Chris Ewers (English), 'The invention of speed: infrastructure, structure, and the sentence'

Michael Flexer (English/WCCEH), “Twenty-two minutes late, escaped puma, Chessington North’: the Spatio-temporal Re-imaginaries of Rail Travel”

Claire Holleran (Classics), “Mobility and Connectivity in the Roman World”

Martin Moore (History/WCCEH), "Commuting as an Everyday Mobility: Race, Class, and Gender in Post-war Britain"

Vike Plock (English), “The Orient Express: Connecting Europe (1883-1939)”

Aidan Power (Film), “An Anthropocene history of cinematic flight: a (very) broad overview”

Kamyar Salavati (IAIS), "'I didn't know where to look': Persian Perceptions of Urban Movement and Transportation in 19th century Britain"

Alun Withey (History), “Unpacking the history of travel preparations in Britain, c. 1750-1914”

Ulrike Zitzlsperger (Modern Languages), “M10 and N4: Telling Stories, Mapping the City”

Discussant:

Stewart Barr (Geography)

Featuring: Professor Sue Parnell (Bristol), Dr. Francesco Amoruso (Exeter), Sandiswa Mapukata (LSE), Penlope Yaguma (UCL)

About our Speakers

Susan Parnell is a Global Challenges Research Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Bristol and Emeritus Professor at the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town. She has held previous academic positions at Wits University and the University of London (SOAS). She was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at UCL in 2011/2, Emeka Anyaoku Visiting Chair at University College London in 2014/15 and Visiting Professor at LSE Cities in 2017/18. She has been actively involved in local, national and global urban policy debates around the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and is an advocate for better science policy engagement on cities. Sue is currently on the Board of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), serves as a member of the African Centre for Cities Advisory Board and had previously served on several NGO structures.

Francesco Amoruso conducts research on Palestinian cities and has worked especially on Rawabi, in the West Bank. Francesco’s research project sits at the intersection of urban studies, settler colonial studies, and Marxist political economy. In particular, he is interested in class formation under settler colonialism, and the role of indigenous capital in the production of colonial space. Sandiswa Mapukata researches the interaction between race, finance and the spatial imaginaries that inform urban policies. Prior to her doctoral studies at LSE, Sandiswa was based at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, a research unit based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was a member of the unit’s Future of Work(ers) where she focused on the future of work in banking in South Africa and Mozambique.

Penlope Yaguma works on the issue of energy in urban informal settlements, with a focus on electricity access for slums in Ugandan cities and the policy frameworks around which affordable and safe access to electricity can be realised. Her research is anchored in energy justice frameworks, which she couples with socio-technical methods to better understand electricity access challenges and devise appropriate solutions.

September 14-15, 2023

Kenton Park Estate