Sheffield Urbanism Lecture Series Global Corridor: Techno-Territorial Constellations on a Transforming Planet

Lecture One: The Multiple Urban Histories of the Corridor

Dr Jonathan Silver will open the lecture series reflecting on the history of corridors, with particular attention to the dynamic, historical relations between trade, technology and urban growth across extended time/space. Drawing on a collective research process he will demonstrate the critical role of infrastructure in the history of urbanisation across various eras of world trade, including thinking closely through classical era Athens, Mughal era Lahore, medieval Mombasa and industrialising Manchester. The lecture will then shift to critically examine the ways in which corridors have become a critical tool in planning regimes across different global regions, particularly over the last century. Finally, Silver will mobilise this historical perspective to question how urban studies is grappling with these overlapping, complex initiatives in the contemporary era through multiple different models, concepts and approaches.

Watch Lecture One Here

Lecture Two: Corridor Urbanisation: A New Global Geography?

In the second lecture Dr Jonathan Silver will consider how new corridors initiatives are challenging our ways of knowing and researching the urban. Drawing on a developing database of over 70 multi-modal, cross border corridor initiatives he proposes the need to think about the dynamic of corridor urbanisation as a critical trajectory in the production of urban-regional space. The lecture will explore different perspectives on how urban studies can interrogate this urbanisation process from the geo-political to the economic before arguing for the necessity of an urban infrastructural perspective in extending critical orientations towards these dynamics. This involves thinking through the various investments that constitute the broader constellations of corridor initiatives and the urban geographies through which these infrastructures intersect including ports and hinterlands, railways and roads, real estate enclaves and zones, energy generation schemes and digital technologies.

Watch Lecture Two here

Dialogue: The Global Urbanisms of the Corridor

In the third part of the series Dr Jon Silver will be joined by a series of collaborators from the GlobalCORRIDOR project. The session will focus on a comparative dialogue that will reflect upon the intersections of corridors and urban life across various global regions including the Mediterranean, East Africa and South Asia. Drawing on extensive fieldwork investigations the dialogue will interrogate the urbanisms that surround and suffuse the making of large-scale infrastructure corridors. Participants will explore the ways in which urban inhabitation becomes both threatened by and tied to these techno-territorial initiatives, alongside the emerging contestations, negotiations and navigations that exist as a lived experience within and adjacent to the space of the corridor.

The dialogue will be co-chaired by Dr Jon Silver, Dr Zhengli Huang and Dr Yannis Kallianos who will be joined by a series of collaborators from Greece, Italy, Kenya and Pakistan including: Dr Hara Kouki (Crete University) and Sypros Gerousis (Independent researcher/filmmaker), Dr Alberto Valz Gris (Politecnico di Torino), Dr Catherine Gateri and Wairimu Gathimba (British Institute of East Africa), Toheed Mohammed and Atoofa Samo (Karachi Urban Lab).