GCRO hosts Stephen Graham

From 20-24 March, GCRO hosted Stephen Graham on the Johannesburg leg of his NRF-funded visit to South Africa. Stephen Graham is Professor of Cities and Society at the Global Urban Research Unit at Newcastle University's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. His work on Splintering Urbanism (2001) is widely known and used in South Africa.

His recent research identifies and addresses a deficiency in much work on urban studies which assumes that cities exist on the surface only. His 2016 book entitled Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers argues that we need to think of cities as volumes. Graham argues that the vertical dimension allows us to consider the spatiality of skyscrapers, drones, elevators, bunkers and mines among other vertical urban phenomena. During his visit, he presented a seminar in the Faces of the City Seminar series at the University of the Witwatersrand. The seminar was based on a section of his new book, and this paper available here: http://rsa.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/136048.