Overseas Centers & Offices

Shanghai

The Shanghai Center started its operation in January 2003 in the School of Social Development at East China Normal University in Shanghai. In June 2011, with the transfer of its coordinator, the center moved to a new base in School of International and Public Affairs at Shanghai JiaoTong University,and began actively pursuing a focus on urban social research. We are conducting surveys of the realities of social exclusion and of policy responses in the new slums with the resettled people who had been evicted by the redevelopment of Shanghai and in districts where migrants are concentrated. We are publishing the results, including manuscripts contributed by our Japanese colleagues, in an Urban Research Papers Series.

Yogyakarta

The URP Yogyakarta Office was established in cooperation with the Indonesia Institute of the Arts (ISI) and the University of Gadjah Mada (UGM). The old city of Yogyakarta is the large base of a cultural art of Indonesia, especially in Java, and it is also a 'city of universities' as around 120 institutions of higher institutions are located there. Since 2003, we have been holding international forums continuously at the Yogyakarta Center jointly with the ISI and the UGM every year.
URP Yogyakarta Office: http://urp.fib.ugm.ac.id/
list of events

Bangkok

As a vibrant and busiest gateway of the Southeast Asia, Bangkok is well connected with the world. The URP Bangkok Office is located in the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts of Chulalongkorn University, the most prestigious academic institution in Thailand. Since 2003, the URP Bangkok Office has hosted annual URP Bangkok Urban Culture Forum to facilitate internatonal exchange in the field of art management and cultural policy.
URP Bangkok Office: http://www.urp.faa.chula.ac.th/urp/
list of events

Hong Kong

The Hong Kong center was opened in Hong Kong Baptist University on January 7th, 2008. We collaborate with the staff of geography, urban planning, and social welfare on the side of Hong Kong. We investigate urban regeneration and the local residents' movement caused by the redevelopment in Hong Kong, the homeless people problem and the housing problem, and the social exclusion provoked by new town development.
list of events

Seoul

Seoul center is located at KOCER: Korea Center for City and Environment Research which is a non-profit and independent research organization. KOCER was originally founded as the Urban Poor Research Institute (UPRI) in 1985 to support poor urban communities. Today the aim of KOCER is to analyze domestic urban issues scientifically and to develop reasonable policy alternatives in order to find better solutions while advocating independent urban grassroots movements.

list of events

Taipei

The Taipei Center was established in September 2010 in collaboration with aid organizations who have experience giving assistance to homeless people and disadvantaged areas, and the Social Welfare Research Department, and the Center for Globalizing Cities at National Taiwan University. With the cooperation of the Social Welfare Bureau of the Taipei City government, it plans to initiate a broad range of assistance activities aimed at the regeneration of disadvantaged areas in an inclusive manner, beginning with humanitarian assistance for housing-vulnerable groups. In March 2011 a workshop was held here aimed at building an East Asian Inclusive Cities Network, positioning the center as a base for the networking of researchers and practitioners from the various East Asian centers and for the dissemination of new research and education programs.
list of events

Manila

The Manila Center was established in 2015 in partnership with DAMPA (The Damayan ng Maralitang Pilipinong Api, "House for Poor People") in Quezon City. In 1996, local organizations working on urban poverty issues formed DAMPA as an umbrella organization in order to fight against illegal evacuation and relocation policy and promote the rights of poor communities. Since 2015, the Center has operated as a new south-east Asian satellite for UPR's inclusive Asian city networking project. It helps to coordinate filed trips and trainings of graduated students and research fellows from URP-OCU, as well as facilitates cooperation with University of the Philippines Diliman.

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Los Angeles (not in operation)

Based on the "LA-Osaka Comparative Urban Studies Program," we advance our research currently in collaboration with the University of Southern California (USC). Our research objective is to investigate the interrelationships and transnational networks in-between Los Angeles and Osaka as the two of global metropolises in the Pacific Rim. We are building up a database to contain information archiving the comparative studies between these two cities. We aspire not only to serve academic scholars but also various communities in USA and Japan.
LA-OSAKA　Project
http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/history/historylab/LA_Osaka/

Melbourne (not in operation)

The center has been set up in Melbourne, one of the "Creative Cities" of UNESCO. The center is located in the University of Melbourne, well-known of creating various community colleges. This center is expected to be a stronghold for efforts to investigate practical ways of social inclusion in the multicultural society and to create new urban visions from the fusion of both academic and "civic wisdom". (As is in Apr. 2009).
list of events

Oxford (not in operation)

The international journal of "City, Culture & Society" of the Urban Research Plaza was published in the year 2010 with Elsevier, Ltd. The editorial office was based in the center of the University of Oxford in the UK. The office is expected to establish the journal as a recognized forum of the urban studies in the Asian settings. Further, the center arranges the programmes of academic English in collaboration with the University of Oxford. (As is in Apr. 2009).