Across the world, a rightward populist turn is reshaping politics, everyday life, and the spaces we inhabit. This series examines the rise of authoritarian urbanism born from the convergence of state power, militarised violence, infrastructure-led development, and racialised and religious nationalism. As neoliberalism faces a crisis of legitimacy, these forces work to consolidate control and drive new waves of urbanisation that deepen social polarisation. Alongside these authoritarian transformations, we trace the everyday democratic practices—subtle acts, collective refusals, and imaginative alternatives—that contest authoritarian rule and open space for different urban futures. Through conversations with researchers, activists, and practitioners, the series takes stock of this authoritarian conjuncture and asks how power, urbanisation, and resistance intersect in shaping our worlds. This episode focuses on the turn towards an ‘authoritarian populism’ as means of securing and extending neoliberal urban policy, and the extent to which a new political formation is being formed through popular contestation in and over urban space. The episodes discusses research on the USA, India, Brazil and the UK to identify both commonalities and differences across how authoritarian leaders mark out new enemies of the nation, extend police powers over the city, and how populist positioning serves to secure the interests of real-estate developers. We suggest that this authoritarian turn may even take us beyond neoliberalism towards an urbanism that is both illiberal in its politics and development model. The episode is hosted by Gareth Fearn with guests Natalie Koch, Malini Ranganathan and Leonardo Fontes. It is one of a three-part series which cover different aspects of ‘authoritarian neoliberal urbanism’, based on a special issue in the Urban Studies Journal edited by Guldem Ozatagan, Gareth Fearn and Ayda Eraydin.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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