Fulong Wu

Born in China and trained in Nanjing and Hong Kong, Wu is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London, after teaching at Cardiff and Southampton, and is the reference researcher on Chinese urbanisation in the English-speaking world. His work in the 1990s followed the transition from the socialist city of work units to the market city, and China's Emerging Cities (2007) gathered that first reading.

Planning for Growth (2015) is his synthesis: Chinese planning is not the tool of control Western theory assumes but an instrument for promoting growth, in which local governments, dependent on the sale of land use rights, expand the city, build new districts and satellite towns and compete for investment. Hence the ghost cities, the superblocks and the debt that Evergrande's collapse made visible.

Creating Chinese Urbanism (2022) studies how neighbourhood life is produced in the gated estates and urban villages of contemporary China. Wu has argued with the theory of the neoliberal city, which he reproaches for not understanding the role of the Chinese state, and his idea of state-led urbanisation is used today to read Chinese projects in Africa and Asia as well.