Jennifer Robinson
Jennifer Robinson is professor of Human Geography at University College London. She is author of Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022). Her ERC funded research focused on the transnational circuits shaping large scale urban developments in three African contexts (Accra, Ghana; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Lilongwe, Malawi) and informs her book project on Transcalar Urban Development Politics.
The project
Title: Politics for an Urbanising Planet: Circuits, Territories, Stateness
"This book therefore proposes core building blocks for conceptualising urban development politics, starting in African contexts, replacing inherited terms like city, municipality or state. Whereas municipal government is significantly attenuated in many African contexts, there are many transnational “circuits” (circulations, flows, connections) which shape urban development, from policy to money to commodities to people. The first part of the book will propose a topological perspective on these, highlighting the ways in which multiple circulating processes are drawn into shaping urban development in particular contexts: outcomes are as much “arrived at” across these multiple flows and connections as determined by people, things or ideas “arriving” somewhere (Lauermann, 2018; Robinson, 2016, 2018). The second part of the book will replace the object of a bounded “city” with emergent “territories” as a potential unit for urban political analysis. Here the concept of “transcalarity” is key. Thinking from the urban as space opens up a new perspective on the relations and actors shaping urban development. After, Lefebvre, the urban could be conceptualised as a “concrete”, open totality mediating general, abstract, or “far” orders and private, “near” orders (Schmid, 2022)."
Hosting institution: Sciences Po
Selective Bibliography
- Robinson, J. 2022. Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
- 2021. Robinson, J. and Attuyer, K. Extracting Value, London Style: Revisiting the role of the state in urban development, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 45, 2, 303-331.
- 2022. Robinson, J., Wu, F., Harrison, P., Wang, Z., Todes, A., Dittgen, R., & Attuyer, K. (2022). Beyond variegation: The territorialisation of states, communities and developers in large-scale developments in Johannesburg, Shanghai and London. Urban Studies, 59(8), 1715–1740.
- 2025. Robinson, J., Harrison, P., Croese, S., Sheburah Essien, R., Kombe, W., Lane, M., Mwathunga, E., Owusu, G., & Yang, Y. (2025). Reframing urban development politics: Transcalarity in sovereign, developmental and private circuits. Urban Studies, 62(1), 3-30.
- 2025. Lane, M., Mwathunga, E., & Robinson, J. (2025). African experiments in infrastructure financialisation: an urbanisation of debt in Malawi. Finance and Space, 2(1), 237–259.
