Alpha City

Life in the super-polarised metropolis

About

The author of this page is Rowland Atkinson, Chair in Inclusive Societies at the University of Sheffield. My crosses a wide range of social problems, most but not all, urban in nature. I’ve been interested in gentrification and displacement, area/poverty effects, gated communities, fortress homes, public housing, the wealthy and super-rich zones of cities and noise. If there is a common theme to my work it is trying to problematise and understand more about what are often under-examined problems (my PhD looked at ways of trying to measure how much displacement occured in Greater London from the impact of gentrification). I am also very keen to explore ways of conceptually and empirically connecting wider social outcomes for the excluded and poor (inequality, city success and so on) to the ways in which the choices and actions wealthier inhabitants make things worse for the less well-off. My book, Alpha City (Verso, 2020) is a longer and in-depth discussion of these issues. I am currently writing a new book about where we find ourselves today, without using AI…

You can find out more about my work at the following spaces: