5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

In the last decade, many urban centres in the SWANA region have faced compounded challenges of conflict, government instability, and intensified environmental changes that have led to displacement. The fleeing communities faced further troubles in their already endangered routes from extreme ecological issues. We find divergence between the investments and the flow of capital in transformational policies and programs that do not necessarily take into account the inclusion of vulnerable actors.

With the rapid political and environmental changes in SWANA cities and the overspread of exclusion and injustice, this panel aims to contextualise, unpack and compare environments of urban justice to trace how urban actors engage with planning systems, governance processes, and the impact on trajectories of urban development. These include trade-offs between satisfying investment purposes like tourism, and the expense to locals; as well as the compound political and environmental transformation in the region making city-building further exclusive and unjust. We will explore the role of these ‘natural’ and the changing socially-constructed environments in shaping realities of and struggles for urban (in)justice in cities across Africa and Asia.