All groups in Social Sciences

Who's involved?

Academic lead: John Hudson, University of York and Michael Humphrey, University of Sydney
Participating groups: Nanjing University; The University of Sydney; University of York

Mega Cities

Global/Mega Cities and Social Policy Research Group

This group is investigating the social policy questions raised by the scale and nature of the world’s largest and most powerful cities which is undergoing significant adjustment.

The broad aims of the project are:

To explore the impacts of the world’s largest and most powerful cities on welfare, the social policy implications of the changing scale and nature of these cities and examine how these cities are shaped in practice by social policy provision.

While the world’s largest and most powerful cities have drawn increasing attention from geographers, demographers, sociologists and economists, the social policy implications of these cities have not featured prominently in debate to date. Likewise, though globalisation has been a strong theme of comparative welfare state research, social policy analysts have paid relatively little attention to the implications of global/mega cities for welfare.

The group is exploring these questions from both theoretical and applied angles. The group held its first international workshop at the University of York in 2009.