The urban dimensions of emerging infectious diseases

There has been a growing academic and policy interest in connecting challenges of a majority urbanised world to questions of health and disease.

This talk will argue that contemporary processes of extended urbanisation can result in increased vulnerability to emerging infectious disease outbreaks. While rapid and intensive forms of urbanisation (densification) are seen as enabling factors for the spread of infectious disease, landscapes of extended urbanisation are arguably more important because patterns of urban sprawl and expansion are more likely to lead to infectious disease outbreaks. In particular, the talk will focus on how three specific aspects of extended urbanisation, including shifting socio-ecological dynamics, infrastructure networks and governance can play a role in both giving rise to and mitigating the impact of future outbreaks.

The talk will also discuss how the COVID-19 outbreak reveals the changing relationships between cities and their hinterlands in global urbanisation processes. These processes are especially pronounced in (but not limited to) rapidly urbanising and developing regions, which have also been the source of earlier major outbreaks such as Ebola and SARS. Given that Asia is one of the most urban and urbanising world regions, the talk will draw upon empirical examples from the COVID-19 crisis to consider how Asian cities from Singapore to Hong Kong have been affected by and responded to the pandemic.

The Speaker

Creighton Connolly is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies and the Global South in the School of Geography, University of Lincoln, UK. He researches urban political ecology, urban-environmental governance and processes of urbanisation and urban redevelopment in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Malaysia and Singapore. He is editor of ‘Post-Politics and Civil Society in Asian Cities’ (Routledge 2019) and has published in a range of leading urban studies and geography journals.

The webinar

The lecture will take about 45 minutes, after which you will have the opportunity to ask questions and engage directly with the speaker and the rest of the audience.

Registration

You can join this live webinar by sending us your contact information via the registration form on this page. Two days before the start of the webinar, we will get in touch with you and provide you with access information and other necessary details. We hope to see you on the 23rd of June!

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