Authoritarian Urbanism Series
Are we seeing the emergence of a new conjuncture for urbanism? The final part of our mini series asks whether authoritarian neoliberalism has created the conditions for a more illiberal and distinct type of urban governance . Authoritarianism is not new to neoliberalism – the Pinochet regime, Thatcherism in the UK – these were evidently authoritarian and neoliberal, and given crises and stagnation it is no surprise to see these tendencies re-animated. But is something more also happening? The high point of neoliberal hegemony was associated with the development of technocratic, often obscure, market systems as well as notions of ‘sustainable development and even at times ‘participation’ and ‘consensus’ even if these were highly circumscribed. When we look at some new urban projects today, and those envisaged by leading powers, there seems to be less room for both markets, preventing climate breakdown or ‘woke’ notions of democracy and instead a more naked focus on iconoclastic real estate projects regardless of the social and ecological cost.
The episode is hosted by Gareth Fearn with guests Jason Luger, Miklós Dürr, Aysegul Can and Oksana Zaporozhets. This episode is one of a three-part series which cover different aspects of ‘authoritarian neoliberal urbanism’, based on a special issue in the Urban Studies Journal edited by Guldem Ozatagan, Gareth Fearn and Ayda Eraydin.
Guests:
Oksana Zaporozhets
Oksana Zaporozhets is a Senior Research Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig. Her research focuses on authoritarian cities and the complexities of digitalization as both a state-driven and citizen-led process. She is currently exploring the role of neighboring and its digital ecosystems in both enacting and challenging authoritarianism. She is the co-editor of Nets of the City: Citizens, Technologies, Governance (2021, in Russian) and co-author of Disassembling Authoritarianism in Everyday Digitally Mediated Neighboring (2025). She currently serves as Principal Investigator of the project Cities ‘Becoming Lost’: The Ruptures of Grand Narratives of Modernity. Her regional expertise centers on cities and digital ecosystems in Russia and Germany.
Jason Luger
Jason Luger is an Assistant Professor of Human Geography at Northumbria University. His research sits at the intersection of urban, political and cultural geography, with a particular focus on the urban geographies of illiberalism. Within that, he investigates authoritarianism and the far-right’s relationship to everyday space, power, and identities through urban comparative methods and cases, from Southeast Asia and East Africa to Europe and North America. Jason’s research on these themes has been featured in journals such as Territory, Politics and Governance [tandfonline.com], Political Geography [sciencedirect.com], Geoforum [sciencedirect.com], and Urban Studies [journals.sagepub.com]; and his forthcoming monograph ‘Urban Life During Illiberalism’ (Bristol University Press, expected fall 2026).
Miklós Dürr
Miklós Dürr is the Head of Junior Year at Milestone Institute, a centre of advanced studies for talented high school students in Budapest, Hungary. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from Durham University. His work explores urban segregation governance, particularly through the lenses of penal and social policy, as well as the notion of illiberalism and its urban dimensions. His broader academic interests include, but are not limited to, smart cities, gentrification, infrastructures, and international development. He previously worked as a PhD Researcher and a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Geography at Durham University.
The special issue paper co-authored with Jason: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00420980251327142 [journals.sagepub.com]
My single-author piece on Illiberal Smart Urbanism: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00420980221100462 [journals.sagepub.com]
Aysegul Can
Aysegul Can is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Regional Studies at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. Her research interests include gentrification, housing financialization, urban resistance movements, urban authoritarian urbanism, energy transition in marginalized areas, and precariousness in higher education. She is currently researching more equitable and green ways to access housing with regard to the housing-energy efficiency/energy poverty nexus. She is an editor of the Radical Housing Journal and viewpoint editor in International Development Planning Review.”
Adding two links to two papers that are related to the podcast: https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2025.2517976 [doi.org] and https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2022.2156237 [doi.org]
Host:
Gareth Fearn
Gareth Fearn is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK.
His research analyses energy, housing and planning by combining approaches from Political Economy and Geography.
He is the co-editor (with Güldem Özatağan & Ayda Eraydin) of a recent special issue for Urban Studies on ‘Authoritarian Neoliberal Urbanism’.
His current project focuses on the British electricity system and the energy crisis.
A full list of his papers, writing and podcasts are available at: https://garethfearn.com/