ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

Southern Urbanism: Local challenges, local knowledge, local solutions, and alternative futures

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Oral SS 08 | Transformative planning actions from the South: Negotiating the past for alternative futures

Speaker

Dr Sadaf Khan (Institute of Development Studies, UK)

Description

The challenges of urban environments in the Global South are numerous, interlinked, and complex. They include rapid growth, limited resources, poverty and informality, migration, displacement, social exclusion, war and climate change. Moreover, societies globally are undergoing transitions, yet they occur in shorter time spans in the Global South: rural to urban migration, navigating pathways between pre- and post-colonial ideas, technologies and materialities. Thus, urbanism of the Global South – whether a geographical or conceptual loci – revolves around an urbanism positioned at the confluence of past, present and future and therefore an urbanism of a myriad of local identities all responding to a complex and context-specific current reality. This highlights the need for a specificity of response that both learns from and includes all stakeholders whether they are coastal communities like in Ghanian cities (Hollmén et al., 2025), market stall operators in Indonesia (Iqbal & Shafique, 2025), or the reimagining of the relevance of archaeological sites in urban areas in Peru (Jiménez-Pacheco et al., 2025). This presentation shares learnings from local communities and local initiatives from across the global south to show how inclusive planning and governance can contribute to more resilient and sustainable cities. These examples highlight the emergence of new kinds of hybrid knowledges, communities, concerns, vulnerabilities and solutions that learn from local practices and priorities.

References

Hollmén, S. H., Marful, A. B., Niskanen, T., Duah, D. Y. A., Manful, E., Pitkänen, M., & Idun, I. A. (2025). Kumasi trees – project of the hearts. Decolonial strategies for advancing urban greenery in a Sub-Saharan city. International Planning Studies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563475.2025.2461664
Iqbal, M. N. M., & Shafique, T. (2025). Speculation from below: how temporal market sustains local heritage in Indonesia’s desakota region. International Planning Studies, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563475.2025.2465753
Jiménez-Pacheco, P., Balladares Cajamarca, R., & Arias Valdez, A. P. (2025). Urban resignification areas in the production of space in Cuenca: El Barranco case. International Planning Studies, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563475.2025.2460715