I am a Lecturer in Urban Geography at the School of Geography in the University of Leeds.
I’m interested in rural-urban transitions, urban peripheries, commons, infrastructure, urban planning, informality, and socio-technical imaginaries. My approach is informed by critical political economy perspectives in the tradition of Lefebvrian critical urban geography, and I’m interested in understanding what opportunities urban spaces provide for emancipatory politics. While my early research was grounded in long-term ethnography in Chongqing, I’m increasingly interested in China as one of several terrains through which to explore wider questions of urban governance and experimentation. My research uses qualitative methods including ethnography.
My doctoral research involved longterm fieldwork in Chongqing, southwest China which led to me publishing on informal urban commons emerging in wastelands, the politics of ‘weird’ architecture, and public housing. More recent projects have explored the politics of displacement, the research potential of tabletop roleplaying games, and discourse of wanghong urbanism. I lead the WUN funded project ‘zoning urbanisation’ which compares how new policy zones in China, the UK and Latin America seek to manage urbanisation and the implications for residents living in and around these spaces.
Generally, what I find interesting in geography is the boundaries and edges of social and technical systems. The enclaves, peripheries, and alternative spaces inside and outside of capitalism and urban life where existing systems are breaking down, producing unforeseen outcomes, or evolving into something new. That informs my interest in the commons, alternative economics, extended urbanisation, and informality. It also underpins an epistemological focus on everyday life and different experimental ways of producing and sharing social and technical knowledge.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Journals
Roast, A. 2024. Towards weird verticality: the spectacle of vertical spaces in Chongqing. Urban Studies https://doi.org/10.1177/2F00420980221094465
Roast A. 2023. A Preliminary Geography of the (Mega)Dungeon; Spatial Practice and Tabletop Role-Playing Games. magazén. 191-218 4.2
Roast A. 2023. To whom does geography owe a future? Lessons from urban studies. Dialogues in Human Geography.
Zhang, A. Y., Roast, A. and Morris, C. 2022. Wanghong Urbanism: Towards a New Urban-Digital Spectacle. Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture 7(4) https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2022/11/wanghong-urbanism/
Roast, A. 2022. Theory from empty land: informal commoning outside/within economies and ecologies of the urban. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13097
Roast, A., Conlon, D., Garelli G., Waite, L. 2022. The need for inter/sub disciplinary thinking in critical conceptualizations of displacement. Annals of the Association of American Geographers https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1997569
Roast A. 2021. Three Theses on the Sinofuturist City. Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 7(2), pp.80-86. https://doi.org/10.5749/vergstudglobasia.7.2.0080
Chapters
Roast A. 2025. An Ethnographic Bricolage: Mapping Everyday Space on the Urban Periphery in Chongqing, China in the Twenty-First Century. In: Ferris K; Halstead H (eds.) Miniatures: A Reader in the History of Everyday Life.
Roast, A. 2020. Planning Chongqing: Between Rural and Urban In: The Routledge Handbook of Planning Megacities in the Global South. London: Routledge, pp.38–51.
Other writing
关于中华未来主义城市的三个论点 (2021) in 学术册子02:中华未来主义读本. Ed: Didigou. PULSASIR. pp.57-66. (translation of Three Theses on the Sinofuturist City)
Peri-urban China (Tian and Guo, 2019) [Review] Eurasian Geography and Economics
A letter from Chongqing (2019) Tribune
Speaking and Conference Papers
Speaking & Conference Papers
Wanghong Urbanism: towards a new digital-urban spectacle – Birkbeck, University of London, April 2023
‘Who really benefits from China’s public housing?’ Transforming informality and the spatiality of Chongqing’s state-led housing strategy – University of Hull, April 2023
Modernity on the periphery: housing and informality after the Chongqing Model – Oxford China Centre Seminar, November 2022
In search of the unknown: Urbanising the Megadungeon – Megadungeon: New Digital Volumetries in Art and Media, Ca ‘Foscari University of Venice, October 2022. (available on youtube)
Urban Agriculture as Wasteland Commons – Global Food and Environment Institute, University of Leeds, May 2022 (available on youtube)
Empty land: informal commons outside/within the urban – Dislocating Urban Studies (Workshop 2), Helsinki University and University of Malmo, March 2021
A Grounded Perspective on Chongqing’s Urbanization – Guest Lecture, Shandong University, Qingdao, December 2020
Outside/within the megacity: informal production of space on the edges of Chongqing – RGS-IBG Annual Conference, RGS, London, August 2019
Verticality as Temporality: imaging futures of vertical density in Chongqing – RGS-IBG Annual Conference, RGS, London, August 2019
Informality and health on the edge of Chongqing – Healthy Cities 2019: Urbanisation, infrastructures and everyday life in East Asia, University of Manchester, May 2019
Invited keynote provocation – Healthy Cities 2019: Urbanisation, infrastructures and everyday life in East Asia, University of Manchester, May 2019
Between techno-orientalism and neo-Maoism: anticipating high-rise urban futures – ASA Annual Conference, University of Oxford, Oxford, September 2018
Ghosts of a Megacity – The City Re/Shaped, University of Leeds, September 2018
Peri-urban Chongqing through a comparative lens – RGS-IBG Annual Conference, University of Cardiff, Cardiff, August 2018
Informality and Space in peri-urban Chongqing – China Urban Geography Conference, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, July 2018
Peripheral Modernities: Space, subjecivity and post-displacement – AAG Annual Conference, New Orleans, April 2018
Neo-Maoist Suburbia? Producing Space and Subjectivity in the public housing of Chongqing, Southwest China – ISA RC21 – Rethinking Global Urban Justice, University of Leeds, Leeds, September 2017
Building Ecological Civilisation – a bottom-up view of periurban space – RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Royal Geographical Society, London, August 2017
Recomposing Class and Modernity between country and city – Chongqing’s public rental housing – ISA RC43 – Unreal Estate? Rethinking housing, class and identity, CUHK, Hong Kong, June 2017
Affective Geographies of Industrial Space – 9th International Artists Workshop, Organhaus Gallery, Chongqing, April 2017
Remaking Urban Modernity in the Post-Socialist Megacity: New and Old Urbanisms in Chongqing – East Asian Research Centre for Alternative Geography Conference, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, December 2016
Holes in the hyperdense – structural gaps and improvisation in the built environment of an emerging megacity – RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Royal Geographical Society, London, August 2016
Modernity, representation and everyday life in “the largest city you’ve never heard of” – Stadtkolloqium Urban Studies Workshop. UCL, London, April 2015
Representing the Post-Representational City: Space, Spectacle and Everyday Life in Chinese Urbanism – RGS-IBG Postgraduate Conference, Sheffield University, Sheffield, April 2015
The European City on Holiday – Psychogeographical Society, University of Leeds, Leeds, Jaunary 2013
Psychogeographies of Post-Socialist Shanghai – Psychogeographical Society, University of Leeds, Leeds, October 2012
Teaching
At the University of Leeds I teach on the MSc Sustainable Cities, and the following undergraduate modules in the School of Geography.
- GEOG1460 The Urban Age (module leader)
- GEOG2046 Making of the Modern City (module leader)
- GEOG2035 Geographies of Economies
- GEOG3085 Contested Cities
Other Works
60 Minute Cities: Chongqing
Field recording album, Bivouac Recordings, April 2019
Displacing Authenticity
Video, Displacements 2018, Johns Hopkins University, April 2018
One or several spaces
Installation, text and sound, U-Turn, Gongchang, Chongqing, May 2017
urbanfutures.co 