Events

Sciences Po, room B.001, 1 place Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 75007 Paris & Zoom* Compulsory registration Can Social Intermediaries Build the State? Taxation and Informal Governance in Lagos, Nigeria In recent years, many low-income countries have attempted to formalize and extract tax revenue from their large informal economies. Why have these efforts so often failed? In this presentation, LeBas presents her book project with Jessica Gottlieb (University of Houston), which explores how taxes-for-services exchange — the central framework used in tax policy and research — may be complicated by the presence of strong, non-state institutions. Where states are weak, these social […]

Salle du Conseil, 13 rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris & Zoom* Compulsory Registration “Slavery’s City and the Genesis of Urban Informality“ How is the history of slavery linked to urban inequality in the Americas’ largest and most enduring slave society? This talk approaches that question through the visual and relational infrastructures of slavery in nineteenth century Brazil. By suggesting links between slavery’s city and the genesis of urban informality as a primary mode of city-building and governance after abolition, I suggest some of the ways that contemporary socio-racial inequalities can be understood as afterlives of Brazil’s most foundational injustice. Speaker […]

Room K008, 1 place Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, 75007 Paris & Zoom* Compulsory Registration “Public Security, Private Interests: On Social Conflict in Contemporary Brazil” Crime, violence and urban militarisation are themes widely explored in the urban studies literature focused on large Latin American cities. With high homicide and violent crime rates, the region features prominently in discussions of public security, accelerated urbanisation and violence. A series of urban ethnographies has explored how violence is connected to the conduct of everyday life, cultural and social representation, and urban territorial governance, processes of city-making and the reproduction of social inequalities. There is little discussion, […]

Sciences Po, Salle de Conseil, 13 Rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris & Zoom* Compulsory Registration Towards a Science of Cities The recent availability of data about various aspects of cities allows us to envision a science of cities validated by empirical observations. In this talk, I will discuss and illustrate with examples three major points that constitute the pillars of such a program: data (focusing on mobile phone data), modeling (including parsimonious models, simulations, and digital twins), and links with policymakers and planners. Speaker Marc Barthelemy is a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris (rue d’Ulm). After his thesis on random […]

CEE Key Themes Seminar* Mandatory Registration Sciences Po, 9 rue de la Chaise, 75007 Paris & Zoom A standard approach to understanding drug markets has been the Risks and Prices model (Reuter and Kleiman, 1986) and its dynamic version developed by Caulkins and Reuter (2011). Both versions assume drug markets move to an equilibrium because drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) can fairly be modeled as responding to competitive pressures by adopting available profit-motivated business practices. More recent empirical studies and the emergence of new market forms (e.g., new synthetic drugs, on-line sales, cryptomarkets) have increased the need for models that address when, […]

Online* Compulsory Registration Presentation of the book “Concrete City: Material Flows and Urbanization in West Africa” Concrete City: Material Flows and Urbanization in West Africa delivers a theoretically informed, ethnographic exploration of the African urban world through the life of concrete. Emblematic of frenetic urban and capitalistic development, this material is pervasive, shaping contemporary urban landscapes and societies and their links to the global world. It stands and circulates at the heart of major financial investments, political forces and environmental debates. At the same time, it epitomises values of modernity and success, redefining social practices, forms of dwelling and living, and popular […]

Sciences Po, Room K031, 1 Place Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 75007 Paris & Zoom* Compulsory Registration When will local governments take meaningful action on fair housing? The impacts of a 2018 law in California Localized resistance to fair housing and social integration is a challenge facing cities around the world. A 2018 California law requires local governments to affirmatively further fair housing when updating their eight-year housing plans, mandating ‘meaningful action’ towards fair housing goals. We assess the impact of this law by examining eight Southern California municipalities’ 2021-2029 housing plans. In addition, we ask whether local governments are planning for […]

Sciences Po, Online via Zoom* Compulsory Registration Launch of the book The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies. Routledge, 2023. The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies is a timely intervention into the field of global urban studies, coming as comparison is being more widely used as a method for global urban studies, and as a number of methodological experiments and comparative research projects are being brought to fruition. It consolidates and takes forward an emerging field within urban studies and makes a positive and constructive intervention into a lively arena of current debate in urban theory. Comparative […]

Seminar Cities are back in town Compulsory Registration Thursday 19 October 2023 5:00 – 7 pm CEST (hybrid) Sciences Po, Salle K011, 1 Place Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 75007 Paris Taxis vs. Uber: knowledge, practices and technological disruption in an urban setting Based on an ethnography of Uber’s conflict with Buenos Aires’ taxis drivers, in this presentation I will discuss how technological disruption affects the political, economic and ethical relations that bind us together. By 2016, over a century and a half of rules, value hierarchies and exclusions rendered practices, bodies and relations knowable in the taxi industry, under the premise […]

Seminar Cities are back in town WIP (Work In Process) Compulsory Registration Thursday 5 October 2023 5:00 – 7 pm CEST (hybrid) Sciences Po, Salle du Conseil – 13 Rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris Muddling on Pathways of Urban Redevelopment: Same Rhyme, Different Tones, and Diverse Trajectories of Chinese Urbanism Inspired by both ongoing debates of universalism/globalism vis-à-vis polycentrism/postcolonialism and an observed shift of emphasis in Chinese urbanization from urban sprawl to urban renewal, this research investigates the diverse trajectories of urban redevelopment in five leading Chinese cities, namely Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The remaking of China’s urban […]