Dr Paul Waley

Profile

My research grows out of a strong focus on specific geographic settings in East Asia. Tokyo has provided the context for much of my research, but I have also worked in Taipei and am currently involved in research projects in Shanghai and Anhui Province. I am also working with Indonesian colleagues on projects in Sumatra. I currently have two central areas of interest: urban restructuring in Chinese cities and contemporary East Asian cities in comparative perspective. I am also actively involved in research on ethnicity and politics in Indonesia and on traditional retail markets in the UK.

Research interests

Recent publications

Papers:

Waley, Paul. 2022. Reflecting the changing landscapes of Edo-Tokyo’s east bank waterways. Storia Urbana 169:2, 125-146.

Jiang Yanpeng and Paul Waley. 2022. Keeping up with the zones(es): how competing local governments in China use development zones as back doors to urbanization. Urban Geography, DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2022.2041821 

Jiang Yanpeng and Paul Waley. 2021. Financialization of urban development in China: fantasy, fact or somewhere in between? Regional Studies. DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2021.1932792

Warganegara, Arizka, and Paul Waley. 2021. The political legacies of transmigration and the dynamics of ethnic politics: a case study from Lampung, Indonesia. Asian Ethnicity, DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2021.1889356.

Jiang Yanpeng and Paul Waley. 2020. Who builds cities in China? How urban investment and development companies have transformed Shanghai. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 44:4, 636-651.  

Jiang Yanpeng and Paul Waley. 2020. Small horse pulls big cart in the scalar struggles of competing administrations in Anhui Province, China. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 38:2, 329-346.

Chen Hao, Wang Lili and Paul Waley. 2019. The Right to Envision the City? The Emerging Vision Conflicts in Redeveloping Historic Nanjing, China. Urban Affairs Review 56:6, 1746–1778.

Jiang Yanpeng, Paul Waley and Sara González. 2018. ‘Nice apartments, no jobs’: How former villagers experienced displacement and resettlement in the western suburbs of Shanghai. Urban Studies 55:14, 3202-3217.

Jiang Yanpeng and Paul Waley. 2018. Shenhong: the anatomy of an urban investment and development company in the context of China’s state corporatist urbanism. Journal of Contemporary China 27:112, 596-610.

Wu Qiyan and Paul Waley. 2018. Configuring growth coalitions among the projects of urban aggrandizement in Kunming, Southwest China. Urban Geography 39:2, 282-298.

Wu Qiyan, Zhang Xiaoling and Paul Waley. 2017. When Neil Smith met Pierre Bourdieu in Nanjing, China: bringing cultural capital into rent gap theory. Housing Studies 32:5, 659-677.

Jiang Yanpeng, Paul Waley and Sara González. 2016. Shanghai swings: the Hongqiao project and competitive urbanism in the Yangtze River Delta. Environment and Planning A 48:10, 1928-1947.

Jiang Yanpeng, Paul Waley and Sara González. 2016. Shifting land-based coalitions in Shanghai’s second hub. Cities 52: 30-38.

Waley, Paul (2016) Speaking gentrification in the languages of the Global East. Urban Studies 53:3, 615-625.

Wu Qiyan, Zhang Xiaoling and Paul Waley. 2016. Jiaoyufication: When gentrification goes to school in the Chinese inner city. Urban Studies 53:16, 3510-3526.

Waley, Paul. 2013. Cities in transcontinental context: A comparison of mega urban projects in Shanghai and Belgrade. SPATIUM International Review No. 13. Pp. 7-11.

Waley, Paul. 2013. Pencilling Tokyo into the map of neoliberal urbanism. Cities 32: 43-50.

González, Sara, and Paul Waley. 2013. Traditional retail markets: the new gentrification frontier? Antipode 45:4, 965-983.

Waley, Paul. 2013. Placing Tokyo in time and space. Journal of Urban History 39:2, 331-335.

Waley, Paul. 2012. Japanese cities in Chinese perspective: towards a contextual, regional approach to comparative urbanism. Urban Geography 33:6, 816-828.

Percival, Tom, and Paul Waley. 2012. Articulating intra-Asian urbanism: the production of satellite cities in Phnom Penh. Urban Studies 49:13, 2873-2888.

Waley, Paul. 2011. Commemoration, conservation, and commodification: representing the past in present-day Tokyo. Jinbun chiri (Human geography) 63:6, 56–70.

Waley, Paul, and Ulrika Åberg. 2011. Finding space for flowing water in Japan’s densely populated landscapes. Environment and Planning A 43:10, 2321-2336.

Waley, Paul. 2011. from modernist to market urbanism: the transformation of New Belgrade. Planning Perspectives 26:2, 209-235.

Waley, Paul. 2010. From flowers to factories: a peregrination through changing landscapes on the edge of Tokyo. Japan Forum 22:4, 281-306.

Book chapters:

Waley, Paul 2017. Resilience amidst fragility along Tokyo’s waterways. In R. Cairoli and S. Soriani, eds. Fragile and Resilient Cities on Water: Perspectives from Venice and Tokyo. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Pp. 33-50.

Waley, Paul 2016. The Social Landscape of Edo. In K. Wigen, F. Sugimoto and C. Karacas, eds.  Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp. 81-84.

Waley, Paul 2013. Modern Japanese Cities. In Paul Clark, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 542-560.

Waley, Paul 2012. Who cares about the past in today’s Tokyo? In C. Brumann and E. Schulz, eds. Urban Spaces in Japan: Social and Cultural Perspectives. London: Routledge. Pp. 148-166.

Waley, Paul 2011. The urbanization of the Japanese landscape. In V. Lyon Bestor, T. Bestor and A. Yamagata, eds. Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society. London: Routledge. Pp. 89-100.

Research groups and institutes

• Social Justice, Cities, Citizenship