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4. Funded Research Projects

4.4 Polarisation, Fragmentation and Resilience: Four Urban
Contexts Contexts Compared (newly funded project)

Principal Investigator: Prof. Li Si-ming

Director of LEWI, Convenor of Urbanization
and Mobility Working Group of LEWI and
Chair Professor of Geography

First Source of Funding: Urban Studies Foundation, UK
Amount Awarded: GBP20,000

Second Source of Funding: Research Committee Conference Grant, HKBU
Amount Awarded: HKD91,700

Third Source of Funding: Office of the Vice-President (Research and
Development), HKBU

Amount Awarded: HKD100,000

Brief Introduction:

The planned conference, which will be held on 29 November – 1 December 2017
at HKBU, represents an international collaboration to conduct comparative
analysis on the nature and manifestations of urban socio-spatial polarisation,

fragmentation and segregation in USA, South Africa, Hong Kong and Mainland
China, with a view to identifying policy initiatives to enhance urban resilience.

Specific objectives include:

1. To investigate the impacts of economic restructuring on access to and quality
of employment, with an emphasis on the global trajectories of the above four

urban contexts and the different experiences of polarisation and
fragmentation that have resulted;
2. To identify the distinct racial and ethnic dimensions that affect access to

housing and employment, such as: in-migration from Mainland China in Hong
Kong; rapid urbanization in Mainland China under hukou discrimination;

migration of Black South Africans into Cape Town and Pretoria since the end
of Apartheid; and the changing patterns of racial segregation and

international in-migration in Atlanta, in the context of state policies including
migration, housing and employment policies that either exacerbate or

moderate polarisation and fragmentation; and

HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY | David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies 28