Trustee tenure: 2016-2020
The USF is sad to announce that Associate Professor Pow Choon Piew passed away in July 2021, leaving behind many fond memories amongst his colleagues and friends at the Urban Studies Foundation. Pow was a dedicated Trustee of the USF, as well as an excellent teacher, student, and expert on urban studies across Asia (especially globalization, urban social transformations, and infrastructural development). His many contributions to the USF were particularly felt through his work on the International Fellowships scheme. To read more about Pow, the USF recommends this warm account of his life as a scholar kindly translated by Karen P.Y. Lai.
Pow was an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. He obtained his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His research interests included: critical geographies of the urban built environment and urban landscape; urban environmentalism and the nexus between urban culture, nature, and power; globalisation and urban cultural politics in Asia; and, geographical moral theories of urban spaces and urban life. His research on the privatisation of Asian cities and gated communities was brought together in Gated Communities in China: Class, Privilege and the Moral Politics of the Good Life (London: Routledge, 2009). He held several other positions as an expert on urban studies in Asia, including as an editorial Board member for the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography and the British Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, and a member of the Singapore Housing Development Board (HDB) Research Advisory Panel and the Singapore Geography Syllabus Development Committee. He was also a Ministry of Education External Examiner for SIM University, School of Arts and Social Sciences.