Urban Imaginaries Research Meeting with Lingnan University, Hong Kong - Report

Concept
At the beginning of the 21st century more than half the world’s population lives in cities, and most major and minor metropolitan regions are undergoing dramatic transformation. Both the diversity and speed of these changes and the fact that they often neither originate in nor are limited to the Western world have thrown into relief the inadequacies of the ‘modernist’ way of framing urban analysis through an ecology of urban forms and the distribution of population and institutional ‘centres’. At the same time, approaches to the urban predicated on the re-centering discourses of globalization and postcoloniality and on the effects of economic and social restructuring on a global scale, cannot do justice to the intricate contingencies and specificities of local and national contexts. The cutting edge of change is now to be found in public cultures situated in dynamic urban settings, and brought into contact by global media industries, communication technologies and cultural economies. Such worldly urban ‘contact points’ are catalysts for change and movement at all levels of society across the globe.
This meeting of an ARC research collective under an ARC Linkages International grant explored critical issues related to contemporary urban public culture in Asian cities. The meeting arose from a joint ARC funded research project between the HRC and Lingnan University, Hong Kong, entitled ‘Urban Imaginaries’. Senior staff from ANU and Lingnan, early career researchers and two PhD students, Tiffany Chung from Lingnan and Michelle Antoinette from ANU, were participants. An excursion to sites of significance in Canberra’s urban development was a part of the Conference and the Director of Historic Houses in the ACT Ian Stevenson together with Emeritus Professor Ken Taylor, an HRC Visiting Fellow, conducted this tour which included site as diverse as Lanyon homestead and Parliament House. HRC Visiting fellows Simon During and Ben Arps also joined the party for the excursion.

Participants included:
Meaghan MORRIS, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China
Stephen CHAN, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China
Oscar HO, Hong Kong Arts Center, Hong Kong, China
WANG Xiaoming, Shanghai University, China
Anirudh PAUL, Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT), Mumbai, India
Shekhar KRISHNAN, Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT), Mumbai, India
Tiffany CHUNG, Lingnan University
Associate Professor Jennifer WEBB, University of Canberra
Ian DONALDSON, Australian National University
Caroline TURNER, Australian National University
Iain McCALMAN, Australian National University
Geremie BARMÉ, Australian National University
Adam SHOEMAKER, Australian National University
Paul PICKERING, Australian National University
Debjani GANGULY, Australian National University
Katherine GIBSON, Australian National University
Michelle ANTOINETTE, Australian National University