Urban imaginaries and power in Asian mega-cities

ADI and Jørgen Delman, Professor, Chinese Studies, invite researchers at the University of Copenhagen to the initial meeting on Urban imaginaries and power in Asian mega-cities.

About the theme

Many of the larger urban regions in Asia are meta-regions that represent considerable agglomeration of political, financial, human, and physical resources in a location that often covers more than one jurisdictional unit. They are spaces for the integration and negotiation of the global, the regional and the local and their development, their visions for the future, their identity and the reconfiguration and use of their spaces are negotiated between the locals and the newcomers, between the authorities and the citizens, between the self and the other. These mega-cities are dynamos of regional, national and global growth, development, and socio-economic change, producing poor and rich, winners and losers, and thriving on the constant contestations and negotiation of their realities, their placeness, their identity, and the imaginaries that drive them forward.

Asian mega-cities are laboratories for urban thinking and development that may help us understand new dynamics of developments in Asia with a global significance.

Meeting agenda

  1. ADI intentions with the new research clusters (MY)
  2. "Urban imaginaries and power in Asian mega-cities" - Brief introduction to the theme (JD)
  3. Participants' ideas: Current activities/proposals
  4. Discussion of proposal, ideas, possible activities
  5. From ideas to research proposal and application
  6. Potential participants/partners
  7. Summary, where do we move from here? Application to ADI, ADI conference panel, "big" application
  8. Other