Tom Gillespie
Biographic Data
| ID | 3719550 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Gillespie |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | Gillespie |
| SIGNATURE | GILLESPIE T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6457-3754 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 277 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Affordable housing, finance and the state
The scale of the 21st-century urban housing challenge has prompted state actors in both the Global North and South to adopt increasingly interventionist approaches to ‘affordable’ housing production. This article draws on research in six cities (Shanghai, Nairobi, Paris, Casablanca, Salford and Rome) to discuss the changing relationship between housing, finance and the state through a global comparative perspective. It adopts an urban statecraft …
New urban frontiers
The frontier is undergoing a resurgence as a productive spatial trope in urban geographical research. This article provides a critical overview of this “frontier moment” and contextualises it within the history of geography and allied disciplines. Building on this tradition, and drawing on the studies collected together in this special issue, we argue that the frontier is a powerful conceptual lens that can generate new insights into the 21st cen…
Road Corridors as Real Estate Frontiers
This paper draws on research on infrastructure‐led development and urbanisation in Nairobi to explore the new urban geographies of rentier capitalism in Africa. Under the banner of Kenya's Vision 2030 national development strategy, Nairobi's agrarian hinterlands have been transformed by major road building projects. These initiatives have catalysed a peri‐urban property boom characterised by the conversion of agricultural and ranching land into u…
Global development and urban studies
Recent calls to shift from an “international” to a “global” development paradigm have sought to challenge global North–South binaries. This has provoked lively debate, with criticisms focusing on two issues: the empirical question of North–South convergence since 1990, and the political-theoretical basis of the proposed paradigm. In response, this paper draws on innovations in postcolonial and comparative urban studies to propose three “tactics” …
Africa’s new urban spaces
Many African governments have embraced centralised spatial planning and the construction of large-scale connective infrastructure as a means to synergise industrialisation and functional urban development. This article examines the tensions between these economic and urban development objectives in Ghana and Kenya. Infrastructure-led development in both cases has fuelled extended and unplanned urbanisation and the production of new frontiers for …
Surplus to the city
Urban scholars have traditionally associated displacement in cities of the global North with gentrification, generally understood as a class-based process of neighbourhood change. This article expands this scalar focus and adopts the larger scale of the local authority district (in this case the London borough) as its epistemological starting point to study the displacement of homeless people by the local state. Participatory action research was …
Deindustrialization in cities of the Global South
Recent research by economists has shown that deindustrialization is more severe in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America than it ever was in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Nevertheless, most research on deindustrialization is focused on the former centres of Fordist manufacturing in the industrial heartlands of the North Atlantic. In short, there is a mismatch between where deindustrialization is researched and …
Covid-19 and the case for global development
The Real Estate Frontier
Africa's major cities are experiencing dramatic transformation as a result of growing real estate investment. This article explores whether existing theories can explain the dynamics of urban redevelopment in an African context, and how African cases can inform new theorizations of real estate driven urban transformation. Examining the utility of theories of gentrification and speculative urbanism for understanding urban redevelopment in Accra, G…
Coastal blue space and depression in older adults
Austerity urbanism and Olympic counter-legacies
This article reflects on an occupation led by single mothers to contest the destruction of social housing in post-Olympics East London. In the process, it argues for a more gendered theorisation of the urban commons. Drawing on auto-ethnography, participant observation and qualitative interviews, the article argues three central points: First, that the occupation demonstrates the gendered nature of the urban commons and the leadership of women in…
From quiet to bold encroachment
This article draws on Asef Bayat’s theory of “quiet encroachment” to analyse the political agency of street hawkers and squatters in Accra, Ghana. It demonstrates how squatters and street hawkers in Ghana’s capital city are engaged in everyday practices of quiet encroachment, whereby they occupy urban space as a means to reproduce themselves. It then explores how encroachers take collective action to defend their access to urban space from state-…
Accumulation by urban dispossession
This article draws on original empirical research in Accra, Ghana to explore the particular dynamics that contemporary processes of class‐based dispossession assume at the urban scale, posing the concept of ‘accumulation by urban dispossession’. It responds to recent calls to shift the focus of urban theory from North to South and demonstrates how widely used concepts must be interrogated and reworked as they travel from place to place. Accra is …
Accumulation by urban dispossession
This article draws on original empirical research in Accra, Ghana to explore the particular dynamics that contemporary processes of class‐based dispossession assume at the urban scale, posing the concept of ‘accumulation by urban dispossession’. It responds to recent calls to shift the focus of urban theory from North to South and demonstrates how widely used concepts must be interrogated and reworked as they travel from place to place. Accra is …
From quiet to bold encroachment
This article draws on Asef Bayat’s theory of “quiet encroachment” to analyse the political agency of street hawkers and squatters in Accra, Ghana. It demonstrates how squatters and street hawkers in Ghana’s capital city are engaged in everyday practices of quiet encroachment, whereby they occupy urban space as a means to reproduce themselves. It then explores how encroachers take collective action to defend their access to urban space from state-…
Covid-19 and the case for global development
Surplus to the city
Urban scholars have traditionally associated displacement in cities of the global North with gentrification, generally understood as a class-based process of neighbourhood change. This article expands this scalar focus and adopts the larger scale of the local authority district (in this case the London borough) as its epistemological starting point to study the displacement of homeless people by the local state. Participatory action research was …
The Real Estate Frontier
Africa's major cities are experiencing dramatic transformation as a result of growing real estate investment. This article explores whether existing theories can explain the dynamics of urban redevelopment in an African context, and how African cases can inform new theorizations of real estate driven urban transformation. Examining the utility of theories of gentrification and speculative urbanism for understanding urban redevelopment in Accra, G…
Austerity urbanism and Olympic counter-legacies
This article reflects on an occupation led by single mothers to contest the destruction of social housing in post-Olympics East London. In the process, it argues for a more gendered theorisation of the urban commons. Drawing on auto-ethnography, participant observation and qualitative interviews, the article argues three central points: First, that the occupation demonstrates the gendered nature of the urban commons and the leadership of women in…
Africa’s new urban spaces
Many African governments have embraced centralised spatial planning and the construction of large-scale connective infrastructure as a means to synergise industrialisation and functional urban development. This article examines the tensions between these economic and urban development objectives in Ghana and Kenya. Infrastructure-led development in both cases has fuelled extended and unplanned urbanisation and the production of new frontiers for …
Deindustrialization in cities of the Global South
Recent research by economists has shown that deindustrialization is more severe in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America than it ever was in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Nevertheless, most research on deindustrialization is focused on the former centres of Fordist manufacturing in the industrial heartlands of the North Atlantic. In short, there is a mismatch between where deindustrialization is researched and …
Road Corridors as Real Estate Frontiers
This paper draws on research on infrastructure‐led development and urbanisation in Nairobi to explore the new urban geographies of rentier capitalism in Africa. Under the banner of Kenya's Vision 2030 national development strategy, Nairobi's agrarian hinterlands have been transformed by major road building projects. These initiatives have catalysed a peri‐urban property boom characterised by the conversion of agricultural and ranching land into u…
Global development and urban studies
Recent calls to shift from an “international” to a “global” development paradigm have sought to challenge global North–South binaries. This has provoked lively debate, with criticisms focusing on two issues: the empirical question of North–South convergence since 1990, and the political-theoretical basis of the proposed paradigm. In response, this paper draws on innovations in postcolonial and comparative urban studies to propose three “tactics” …
Coastal blue space and depression in older adults
Accumulation by urban dispossession
This article draws on original empirical research in Accra, Ghana to explore the particular dynamics that contemporary processes of class‐based dispossession assume at the urban scale, posing the concept of ‘accumulation by urban dispossession’. It responds to recent calls to shift the focus of urban theory from North to South and demonstrates how widely used concepts must be interrogated and reworked as they travel from place to place. Accra is …
From quiet to bold encroachment
This article draws on Asef Bayat’s theory of “quiet encroachment” to analyse the political agency of street hawkers and squatters in Accra, Ghana. It demonstrates how squatters and street hawkers in Ghana’s capital city are engaged in everyday practices of quiet encroachment, whereby they occupy urban space as a means to reproduce themselves. It then explores how encroachers take collective action to defend their access to urban space from state-…
Coastal blue space and depression in older adults
Austerity urbanism and Olympic counter-legacies
This article reflects on an occupation led by single mothers to contest the destruction of social housing in post-Olympics East London. In the process, it argues for a more gendered theorisation of the urban commons. Drawing on auto-ethnography, participant observation and qualitative interviews, the article argues three central points: First, that the occupation demonstrates the gendered nature of the urban commons and the leadership of women in…
Deindustrialization in cities of the Global South
Recent research by economists has shown that deindustrialization is more severe in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America than it ever was in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Nevertheless, most research on deindustrialization is focused on the former centres of Fordist manufacturing in the industrial heartlands of the North Atlantic. In short, there is a mismatch between where deindustrialization is researched and …
Covid-19 and the case for global development
The Real Estate Frontier
Africa's major cities are experiencing dramatic transformation as a result of growing real estate investment. This article explores whether existing theories can explain the dynamics of urban redevelopment in an African context, and how African cases can inform new theorizations of real estate driven urban transformation. Examining the utility of theories of gentrification and speculative urbanism for understanding urban redevelopment in Accra, G…
Surplus to the city
Urban scholars have traditionally associated displacement in cities of the global North with gentrification, generally understood as a class-based process of neighbourhood change. This article expands this scalar focus and adopts the larger scale of the local authority district (in this case the London borough) as its epistemological starting point to study the displacement of homeless people by the local state. Participatory action research was …
Africa’s new urban spaces
Many African governments have embraced centralised spatial planning and the construction of large-scale connective infrastructure as a means to synergise industrialisation and functional urban development. This article examines the tensions between these economic and urban development objectives in Ghana and Kenya. Infrastructure-led development in both cases has fuelled extended and unplanned urbanisation and the production of new frontiers for …
Global development and urban studies
Recent calls to shift from an “international” to a “global” development paradigm have sought to challenge global North–South binaries. This has provoked lively debate, with criticisms focusing on two issues: the empirical question of North–South convergence since 1990, and the political-theoretical basis of the proposed paradigm. In response, this paper draws on innovations in postcolonial and comparative urban studies to propose three “tactics” …
Road Corridors as Real Estate Frontiers
This paper draws on research on infrastructure‐led development and urbanisation in Nairobi to explore the new urban geographies of rentier capitalism in Africa. Under the banner of Kenya's Vision 2030 national development strategy, Nairobi's agrarian hinterlands have been transformed by major road building projects. These initiatives have catalysed a peri‐urban property boom characterised by the conversion of agricultural and ranching land into u…
New urban frontiers
The frontier is undergoing a resurgence as a productive spatial trope in urban geographical research. This article provides a critical overview of this “frontier moment” and contextualises it within the history of geography and allied disciplines. Building on this tradition, and drawing on the studies collected together in this special issue, we argue that the frontier is a powerful conceptual lens that can generate new insights into the 21st cen…
Affordable housing, finance and the state
The scale of the 21st-century urban housing challenge has prompted state actors in both the Global North and South to adopt increasingly interventionist approaches to ‘affordable’ housing production. This article draws on research in six cities (Shanghai, Nairobi, Paris, Casablanca, Salford and Rome) to discuss the changing relationship between housing, finance and the state through a global comparative perspective. It adopts an urban statecraft …
Geography (11 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (8 works) · Economic geography (7 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (6 works)