In the last two decades, an information revolution in the Global South has profoundly shaped the urbanisation of metropolitan regions. Global and national initiatives to adopt a range of digital, smart and AI-driven technologies in local governments have circulated the claim that opportunities presented by digitalisation will resolve the challenges of urbanisation and create sustainable and equitable futures.

As part of the Regional Futures project, we invite you to join us at an international conference to expand upon our analysis of the dynamics of urbanisation-as-digitalisation. In this conference, we will collectively examine how digitalisation produces new territories for metropolitan urbanisation and how state and non-state actors assist, negotiate, contest, and disrupt these regional futures. The Regional Futures research team brings cases from the peripheries of metropolitan regions in India, Kenya, and Mexico, and we seek to explore how digitalisation, urbanisation, and related dynamics unfold in other contexts in the Global North and South.

Refreshment and lunch will be provided.