World Cities, Economies and Social Life

As the proportion of the world’s population living in cities continues to increase, the research agenda of this group has come to include cross-national approaches to urbanization, cosmopolitanism, and the transnational economies of urban spaces.  Research is distinguished by a combination of theoretical and empirical investigations of contemporary urban and economic life and practical engagement with social policy makers and stakeholders.  Empirical studies – such as those on the development of finance and property markets in East Asia, modes of urbanization and practices of economic exchange in African cities, and changing forms of economic organization in Europe and the USA – have shown how the relations between state, economy and space are currently being redrawn across the globe.  Studies of contemporary racism, cosmopolitanism, the development of the far right and the politics of diversity have provided the basis for an analysis of urban multiculturalism that has proved of considerable public and government interest.  Members of the group have conducted a wealth of research demonstrating the extemporized and vernacular character of urban cultures.  This expertise in multiculture is extended by work that takes the city as the creative site of cultural production, an approach that has been developed in collaboration with minority groups (for example, travellers, refugees, gay and transgender communities), and makes use of multi-media methods of research.