Is speculative urbanism sustainable? Lessons from the Global South - Helga Leitner

The Earth System Sciences Program at the Academy of Sciences invited Helga Leitner, Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, to deliver the third Elisabeth Lichtenberger Lecture.

Urbanization has entered a new global phase. Across the Global South, especially in Asia, cities are expanding at record speed. In Jakarta, speculative real estate, high-rise housing, and large infrastructure projects have displaced thousands from informal settlements while worsening land subsidence through groundwater depletion and soil compaction from the weight of new buildings. At the same time, rising seas and extreme flooding demand urgent responses. To address these challenges, consultancies and policy actors, mostly from the Global North, promote sustainability and resilience models, but these often impose technical, top-down solutions that overlook local realities. In contrast, grassroots initiatives in informal spaces show how communities manage shocks and long-term stresses such as shifting jobs, environmental risks, and policy changes. Research shows true resilience must center on justice and rights.

These insights come from the North-South collaborative project Speculative Urbanism: Land, Livelihoods and Finance Capital (2012–2022, Jakarta and Bangalore). It had two goals: 1) identify drivers of major land transformations in Asia’s fast-growing cities and their implications for livelihoods and sustainability, and 2) examine the uptake of global sustainability and resilience models while highlighting bottom-up initiatives.