Uppsala Lecture in Housing and Urban Research
IBF organizes Uppsala Lecture in Housing and Urban Research evey year. The lecture is held by an internationally leading scholar in housing and urban research.
Dark city: London’s super-rich, city politics and the criminal real estate economy
This year's lecturer is Professor Rowland Atkinson, Research Chair in Inclusive Societies, University of Sheffield. He will give the public lecture Dark city: London’s super-rich, city politics and the criminal real estate economy on 6 September.
Professor Rowland Atkinson, University of Sheffield
Most welcome to this public lecture with this year's lecturer Professor Rowland Atkinson! After the lecture the audience is invited to mingle with drinks and snacks.
Time: Wednesday 6 september at 15.00-16.00
Place: University Main Building, Hall IX
About Rowland Atkinson
Rowland Atkinson is Research Chair in Inclusive Societies at the University of Sheffield. The central focus of his work is on how social divisions find spatial expression in urban contexts. He is an urban sociologist whose work crosses the boundaries of urban and housing studies, geography and criminology. His most recent book, Alpha City (2020), looked at how the super-rich influence the political and property machine of London.
Abstract for the lecture
I want to use this lecture to review my work on the influence of the super-rich on London and then to extend that analysis in the light of emerging evidence about tax havens, criminal capital and political corruption.
The message of my book Alpha City was that a resurgence in the fortunes of the global super-rich was, in reality, bad news for London. This group had effectively ‘captured’ the city through purchases of property, their evasion of taxation, and their infiltration of the political system. The rich got richer, the city offered a playground for them socially, and a piggybank for their assets to grow economically.
This story takes us up to the time of the pandemic which, as we all know, expanded existing inequalities. However, it soon became clear that life not only continued, but boomed again for the rich. I want to argue that the result of these fortunes for the few are again producing a ‘darker’ city, a place whose vitality is actually depleted by big money and a politics that is happy to be influenced by capital.
The ‘light’ of wealth has a flipside in a dark city in which rising rents, poor mental and physical health and declining opportunity, even for the middle-classes is clear – governed by a political class that either does not care or claims not to have the resources to help. I want to ask, where might we go from here?
About Uppsala Lecture in Housing and Urban Research
Uppsala Lecture in Housing and Urban Research is awarded to internationally leading researchers in residential and urban research.
With Uppsala Lecture in Housing and Urban Research, IBF wishes to make visible and stimulate housing and urban research of the highest quality - locally, nationally and internationally.
Watch the lectures
All Uppsala Lecture lectures are filmed and published at the University's film channel.
Here you will find all the collective film material from Uppsala Lecture
You can also click on the individual film links below.
- has substantially contributed to / changed research within the IBF area in a way that has academic relevance beyond the empirical scope
- are both well-established in the field and are conducting strong research
- produces current, challenging and society-relevant research that is of public and broad interest
XI: Margaret Kohn
VIDEO: Urban Ideology in the New Gilded Age
Margaret (Peggy) Kohn is a Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto. Her primary research interests are in the areas of the history of political thought, critical theory, social justice, and urbanism. Her most recent book "The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth" was published 2016.
X: Leah Platt Boustan
VIDEO: Streets of gold: The role of geography in immigrant assimilation in the United States
Leah Platt Boustan is a professor at Economics at Princeton University and director of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton’s Department of Economics. She is also co-director of the Development of the American Economy Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-editor at the Journal of Urban Economics.
IX: Raquel Rolnik (2019)
VIDEO: Urban Warfare – Housing under the empire of finance
Raquel Rolnik is a professor, architect and urban planner at the University of São Paulo. From 2008 to 2014, professor Rolnik was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. She has written several books, including “Urban warfare: Housing and cities in the age of finance”, on which she based her lecture in Uppsala.
VIII: Karl Schlögel (2018)
VIDEO: How to Read East European Cities – Bringing back space into history
Karl Schlögel is a professor of Eastern European History. In Sweden, he is perhaps best known for his 2008 book “Moscow, 1937” (English translation published in 2014), with the Swedish title “Terror och dröm. Moskva år 1937” (2011). His lecture discusses Eastern Europe’s post-war urban development.
VII: David Harvey (2017)
VIDEO: Visualizing Capital
David Harvey is a professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and an internationally leading theoretician within the field of urban studies.In 1960 and 1961, Harvey was postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University, and in 2000 he was conferred the title of honorary doctor at the University.
VI: Li Zhang (2016)
VIDEO: Battles Over Green Space: Land Disputes, Rights Activism, and Emerging Publics in Urban China
Li Zhang is a professor of Anthropology and Acting Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Her research deals with the social, political and cultural effects of market reforms and social transformations in today’s post-socialist China.
V: Edward Glaeser (2015)
VIDEO: The Urban Century – An Urban World
Edward Glaeser is a professor of Economics at Harvard University. He has introduced several theories within urban geography, price theory and poverty.
IV: Gerry Stoker (2014)
VIDEO: Challenging Democratic Myopia: Decentralised decision-making and citizen participation
Gerry Stoker is a professor of Politics and Governance and the director of the Centre for Citizenship, Globalization and Governance (C2G2) at the University of Southampton. He is also a professor of Politics at the University of Canberra.
III: Sharon Zukin (2013)
VIDEO: Beyond authenticity: Local shopping streets in global cities
Sharon Zukin is a professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College in New York. Her book “Loft living” (1982, 1989) is considered ground-breaking.
II: Loïc Wacquant (2012)
VIDEO: Paradoxes of ghettoization
Loïc Wacquant is a professor of Sociology. He is active at the University of California, Berkeley and associated with the Centre de sociologie européenne (CSE) in Paris. He has researched on ghettos and prisons.
I: Susan J. Smith (2010)
The crisis of residential capitalism: a tale of three markets and four visions
Susan J. Smith is a Professor of Social and Economic Geography at the University of Cambridge. Unfortunately, her lecture was not recorded.