Dr Manuel Dammert-Guardia, Prof Cecilia Wong, Dr Hugo Sarmiento, and Dr Jessica Pineda-Zumarán
Funding period: 1 October 2025 – 28 February 2027
Type of funding:
Seminar Series
Partner organisations: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru PUCP (Peru), Centro de Investigación en Teoría Urbana y Territorial URBES-LAB (Peru), Columbia University (United States), and University of Manchester (United Kingdom).
Events: research workshop (October 2025, Lima and hybrid), part one methods school (March 2026, Lima and hybrid), part two methods school (October 2026, Lima, in-person), hybrid colloquium (October 2026, Lima), and international research conference (October 2026, Lima and hybrid).
Lead organisers: Dr Manuel Dammert-Guardia, (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru), Prof Cecilia Wong (University of Manchester, United Kingdom), Dr Hugo Sarmiento (Columbia University, United States), and Dr Jessica Pineda-Zumarán (Centro de Investigación en Teoría Urbana y Territorial URBES-LAB, Peru)
Team members: Dr Diana Torres Obregón, Maria Tuanama Alvarez, Jaime Vargas Villafuerte, Dr Nuno Pinto, Prof Tom Slater, Dr Anthony Vanky, Daniela Perleche Ugás, Samantha Saona Sarabia, Mauricio Rada Orellana, Katherin Tiburcio Jaimes, and Adrián Aiquipa Zavala
Contact: Dr. Manuel Dammert-Guardia
Abstract:
Nowadays, intensifying capitalism and financial capital are profoundly shaping global urbanisation, making land a valuable commodity for wealth accumulation. In various contexts, this has exacerbated global capital flows and speculative real estate dynamics associated with money laundering, white-collar crime and the growth of urban mafias. Despite the diverse spatial contexts, one pervasive effect of these circumstances emerges: the deepening precariousness of housing access and worsening affordability crisis. However, the penetration of these new actors and their practices into most spheres of everyday life has generated local and community resistance, which needs to be understood and shared across national and regional contexts.
This seminar series explores the two sides of this phenomenon. On the one hand, it debates the nature of speculative real estate dynamics and the emergence of new interests and mechanisms that support questionable actors, including those involved in illegal activities. On the other hand, it discusses how social movements, organised communities and individuals develop strategies to resist, re-imagine or survive within structures of hegemonic urbanisation. With the aim of identifying convergences and divergences between these experiences, one main contribution of these collective discussions will be the development of a conceptual framework that links local resistance to the global structural dynamics of urban development. To achieve this, debates within the seminar series will compare three different urban development policy and planning structures: the American market-led system, the British planning-led system, and the Peruvian regulatory-flexible system. The framework is expected to challenge the individualistic logic of property ownership by considering alternatives that prioritise collective territorial connections and recognise socio-spatial collective rights.