Post-Pandemic Urbanism in Southern Cities: Intensifying cities, leftover urban spaces, and pandemic pedagogies
Japanese Room, Level 4, Glyn Davis Building (Melbourne School of Design), Masson Rd, University of Melbourne Parkville, VIC 3010
Photo credit: WorldAtlas.com
About this event
Drawing on research carried out in three major cities across Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, the session seeks to generate a critical dialogue on the implications of the pandemic for urban research and pedagogy for post-pandemic urban futures. The speakers share insights and learning from critically examining South Asian urban contexts in the time of Covid-19 by posing the following diverse questions: Is Millennial Karachi an “intense city” with compounding precarities of varying scales? What needs are revealed in Colombo’s post-pandemic urban spaces in the new normal? What new opportunities do pandemic pedagogies offer to post-pandemic learning spaces?
The panel includes two eminent scholars Professor Anant Maringati and Professor Nausheen Anwar, based at research institutions in India and Pakistan, respectively, and Dulani Denipitiya, an early career researcher based at the University of Melbourne.
Our conversation with three Southern researchers will focus on the implications of the pandemic for urban research and pedagogy in three cities: Karachi, Hyderabad, and Dhaka.
Intensifying Urbanities in Karachi: A South Asian City in the Time of COVID-19
Dr Nausheen H. Anwar
Director, Karachi Urban Lab
Millennial Karachi is an “intense city” with compounding precarities of varying scales. The COVID-19 pandemic has added yet another layer of uncertainty. Through an engagement with the concept of the intense city, the pandemic’s regulation and hopeful prospects in the state’s new welfare policies are considered.
Pandemic governance and uneven citizenship in Dhaka
Dr Luftun Nahar Lata
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Queensland
She will share insights from her research in Dhaka city, Bangladesh, on the governance of the Covid19 pandemic and its uneven impact on the urban poor.
What the Pandemic Revealed about the Classroom
Dr Anant Maringanti
Director, Hyderabad Urban Lab
This talk draws on our experience of teaching field-based courses particularly around built environment through the two years of lockdown to argue that the post pandemic pedagogy should take on board the new opportunities revealed by the online instruction and reform current practices.
About the presenters
Dr Nausheen H. Anwar is Director, Karachi Urban Lab & Professor of City & Regional Planning, in the School of Economics & Social Sciences (SESS), Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi. She received her PhD from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), Columbia University. Nausheen’s work focuses on the politics of urban planning/urban development, climate change and infrastructural development in the urban Global South.
Dr Lutfun Nahar Lata is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR). As part of her PhD and post PhD research, she has developed an impactful program of research into the key social policy topics of poverty governance, precarious work, migration, urban marginality, housing and place-based disadvantage. She is a mixed-methods researcher with extensive experience in conducting and publishing qualitative, quantitative and digital research, and working with multidisciplinary teams that include stakeholders from academia, industry and local and central governments.
Dr Anant Maringanti is a geographer with a PhD from University of Minnesota and has taught graduate courses at the National University of Hyderabad. His research and teaching interests center on questions of urbanization and globalization from the South – Asian vantage point. He is currently the Director of Hyderabad Urban Lab, a multi-disciplinary research centre. He is widely published in National and International academics journals on social movements, politics of development and urbanization.
Associate Professor Iderlina Mateo-Babiano (Moderator) is Associate Professor in Urban Planning and Assistant Dean, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Melbourne.
This seminar series is part of the University of Melbourne, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning international research seminar series on Southern built environments in collaboration with the MSD-Colour Diversity Group. Previous seminars and video recordings can be accessed here.