The economic zone is also a cultural, rather than exclusively economic, phenomenon, and my research explores its genealogy as a space of urban modernity in Asia and beyond. I offer a new theoretical approach to the zone as an urban form—the Ex City—that combines classically modernist fantasies with contemporary logics of accumulation.

Articles on Special Economic Zones (see also publications on Shenzhen and China)

Forthcoming         “China’s Economic Zones: Remaking Rural and Urban in the era of Reform” in Lisa Hoffman, Jennifer Hubbert, and Zhilin Liu, eds., SAGE Handbook of Urbanization in China, SAGE Publishers.

2025       “Stalking the Zone: Late Capitalist Logics and State Socialist Models.” In Tim Beasley-Murray, Wendy Bracewell and Michał Murawski, Anti-Atlas: Towards a Critical Area Studies, London: UCL Press, pp. 173-178. 

2019 “What Kind of Model? Thinking about the Special Economic Zone and the Socialist City.” Made in China Journal, Volume 4(2), 2019, pp. 72-78. 

2011 “Modernity and the Urban Imagination in Economic Zones.” Theory, Culture & Society, Volume 28(5), 98-122.

2008 “Labors of Globalization: Emergent State Responses” (with M. Scott Solomon). New Global Studies, Volume 2(2). 

• An earlier version published in 2006 as: “Processi Transnationali e Progretti Nazionali: migrazione del lavoro globale, Zone di esportazione e strategie statali emergenti” (with M. Scott Solomon). Il lavoro pubblico (8).