renxuefe@msu.edu
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Xuefei Ren is a comparative urbanist whose work explores urban governance and the built environment from a global perspective. She is the author of three award-winning books: Governing the Urban in China and India: Land Grabs, Slum Clearance, and the War on Air Pollution (Princeton University Press, 2020), Urban China (Polity, 2013), and Building Globalization: Transnational Architecture Production in Urban China (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
Ren is a fellow in the Humanity’s Urban Future program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and previously served as a Public Intellectual Fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. She has held editorial roles as an associate editor for the Journal of Urban Affairs and City and Community, and as an editorial board member of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Her research has been supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Urban Studies Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, among others.
Currently, she is completing a co-authored book manuscript, “The City after Covid-19: Chicago, Toronto, and Johannesburg," and has launched several new research initiatives, including (1) Future-Proofing Climate Boomtowns: Lessons from Chicago, Toronto, Geneva, and Zurich; (2) Rethinking Southern Urbanism from the Periphery; and (3) ThePolitical Ecology of Snow. Together, these projects aim to advance a new approach to comparative urban political economy through the lenses of geopolitics, hinterlands, and climate imaginaries.
BOOKS
2020
2018
2013
2011
ARTICLES
(For download)
Hassink, Robert, David Ponzini, Dieter Kogler and Xuefei Ren. 2025. "The Symbolic Value of Megaprojects in Urban and Regional Economy," Cambridge Journal of Economy, Regions and Society. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsaf009
Ren, Xuefei. 2025. "Rethinking southern urbanism from the periphery," Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais (Brazilian Journal of Urban and Regional Research).
Li, Yifei and Xuefei Ren. 2024. "Everyday oblivion in eco-civilized China," Qualitative Sociology, 47(3), 1-20.
Ren, Xuefei. 2021. “The peripheral turn in global urban studies,” South Asia Interdisciplinary Academic Journal, 26, 1-8.
Ren, Xuefei. 2021. “Suburbs and urban peripheries in a global perspective,” City & Community, 20(1): 38-47.
Garrido, Marco, Xuefei Ren, and Liza Weinstein. 2021. “Toward a Global Urban Sociology: Keywords,” City & Community, 20(1): 4-12.
Ren, Xuefei. 2020. “Historical Preservation in Rustbelt China: The Life and Death of Jihong Bridge,” Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, 2(2): 1-12.
Ren, Xuefei. 2020. “From a comparative gesture to structured comparison: An analysis of air pollution control in Beijing and Delhi,” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 13(3): 461-473.
Ren, Xuefei. 2020. “Pandemic and lockdown: A territorial approach to Covid-19 in China, Italy, and the U.S.” Eurasian Geography and Economics, 61(4-5): 423-434.
Ren, Xuefei. 2020. “Slums, favelas, and urban villages: Housing crises in Guangzhou, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro,” Current History, 119 (813): 15-21.
Ren, Xuefei. 2018. “From Chicago to China and India: Studying the city in the 21st century,” Annual Review of Sociology, 44: 497-513.
Ren, Xuefei. 2017. “Aspirational urbanism from Beijing to Rio de Janeiro: Olympic cities in the global South and contradictions,” Journal of Urban Affairs, 39(7): 894-908.
Ren, Xuefei. 2017. “Governing the informal: Housing policies over informal settlements in China, India, and Brazil,” Housing Policy Debate, 28(1): 79-93.
Ren, Xuefei. 2017. “Land acquisition, rural protests, and the local state in China and India,” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 35(1): 22-38.
Ren, Xuefei. 2015. “City power and urban fiscal crises: The USA, China, and India,” International Journal of Urban Sciences, 19(1): 73-81
Ren, Xuefei. 2014. “The political economy of urban ruins: Redeveloping Shanghai,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(2): 1081-91.
Morgan, George and Xuefei Ren. 2012. “The creative underclass: Culture, subculture and urban renewal,” Journal of Urban Affairs, 34(2): 127-130.
Ren, Xuefei. 2012. “‘Green’ as spectacle in China,” Journal of International Affairs, 65: 19-30.
Ren, Xuefei and Meng Sun. 2012. “Artistic urbanization: Creative industries and creative control in Beijing,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36(3): 504-521.
Weinstein, Liza and Xuefei Ren. 2009. “The changing right to the city: Urban renewal and housing rights in globalizing Shanghai and Mumbai,” City & Community, 8(4): 407-432.
Ren, Xuefei. 2009. “Olympic Beijing: Reflections on urban space and global connectivity,” International Journal of the History of Sports, 26(8): 1011-1039.
Ren, Xuefei. 2008. “Forward to the past: Historical preservation in globalizing Shanghai,” City & Community, 7(1): 23-43.
Ren, Xuefei. 2008. “Architecture and nation building in the age of globalization: Construction of the National Stadium of Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games,” Journal of Urban Affairs, (30)2: 175-190.
Ren, Xuefei. 2008. “Architecture and China’s urban revolution,” City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action, 12(2): 217-225.
Ren, Xuefei. 2008. “Architecture as branding: Mega-project developments in Beijing,” Built Environment, 34(4): 517-531.
Ren, Xuefei. 2006. “La ville Chinoise et ses ‘grands projets’ urbains : l’architecture internationale en question,” La Vie des Idées, 12: 77-83.
Ren, Xuefei. 2005. “The first Chicago School of urban sociology: 1910s-1930s,” Urban China Review, 1(1): 85-93.
Ren, Xuefei. 2004. “The rise of the creative class and urban amenity theory,” The Annals of Japanese Association for Urban Sociology, 22: 189-98.
Book Chapters
Ren, Xuefei. 2024. “Experts, policymaking, and China’s responses to Covid-19”, in Expertise and Policymaking in India and China, edited by Manjari Mahajan and Mark W. Frazier. Amsterdam University Press.
Ren, Xuefei. 2023. “Urban China and Covid-19: How Chinese cities responded to the pandemic,” in Handbook on Local Governance in China: Structures, Variations, and Innovations, edited by Ceren Ergenc and David S. G. Goodman. Edward Elgar.
Woodworth, Max, Xuefei Ren, Jesse Rodenbiker, Ettore Santi, Yining Tan, Li Zhang, Yu Zhou. (forthcoming). “Researching China during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Covid-19 and an Emerging World of Ad Hoc Geographies, Stanley D. Brunn and Donna Gilbreath (eds.) Edward Elgar.
Ren, Xuefei. 2021. “The political economy of urban ruins: Redeveloping Shanghai,” in Re-creating Shanghai, Rosemary Wakeman (ed). Springer.
Ren, Xuefei. 2020. “Redeveloping informal settlements in China, India, and Brazil,” in Chinese Cities in the 21st Century, Youqin Huang (ed), p.81-90. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ren, Xuefei. 2020. “Nanjing too, introduction Two,” “Mountain island city,” “Bridge city” in Nanjing Charter, Terreform (ed), p.30, 89, 112. New York: Terreform.
Ren, Xuefei. 2020. “Planning mega-regions in China and India,” in Metropolitan Circles Development and the Future of Urbanization, Wei Shan and Lijun Yang (eds). Singapore: World Scientific Press.
Ren, Xuefei. 2020. “Thousand-mile city,” in Routledge Handbook of Chinese Architecture, Jianfei Zhu, Wei Chen, and Hua Li (eds). London: Routledge.
Ren, Xuefei. 2019. “Robert Park in China: From the Chicago School to urban China studies,” in The City in China: Perspectives on Contemporary Urbanism, Ray Forrest, Julie Ren, and Bart Wissink (eds), p.1-16. Bristol: Policy Press.
Ren, Xuefei. 2019. “Building on quick sand: Infrastructural megaprojects in China,” in Critical Perspectives on Suburban Infrastructure, Pierre Filion (ed), p.301-317. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ren, Xuefei. 2019. “Cities in developing countries,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, Anthony Orum (ed), p.1-8. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Ren, Xuefei. 2018. “A genealogy of redevelopment in Chinese cities,” in Urbanization and Urban Governance in China: Issues, Challenges, and Development, Lin Ye (ed), p.93-108. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ren, Xuefei. 2018. “In search of the cosmopolitan Chinese city: Guangzhou’s urban villages,” in Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City, Michael Sorkin (ed), p.202-211. New York: Terreform.
Ren, Xuefei and Roger Keil. 2018. “From global to globalizing cities,” in The Globalizing Cities Reader, Xuefei Ren and Roger Keil (eds), p.xxiii-xxix. New York: Routledge.
Ren, Xuefei. 2018. “Global city building in China and its discontents,” in The Globalizing Cities Reader, Xuefei Ren and Roger Keil (eds), p.307-312. New York: Routledge.
Ren, Xuefei. 2018. “Governing the informal in globalizing cities: Comparing China, India, and Brazil,” in The Globalizing Cities Reader, Xuefei Ren and Roger Keil (eds), p.459-464. New York: Routledge.
Ren, Xuefei. 2018. “ ‘Green’ as urban spectacle in China,” in Sustainable Cities in Asia, Federico Caprotti and Li Yu (eds), p.77-85. London: Routledge.
Ren, Xuefei. 2017. “Fragile entrepreneurialism: The Mumbai airport slum redevelopment project,” in Entrepreneurial Urbanism in India: The Politics of Spatial Restructuring and Local Contestation, Smitha Kanekanti Chandrashekar (ed), p.157-173. Singapore: Springer.
Ren, Xuefei. 2017. “Biggest infrastructure bubble ever? City and nation building with debt-financed megaprojects in China,” in The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management, Bent Flyvbjerg (ed), p.139-153. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ren, Xuefei. 2017. “Cities in China and India: Disjuncture, master-concepts, and comparisons,” in A Research Agenda for Cities, John R. Short (ed), p.195-205. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Ren, Xuefei. 2017. “Lost in translation: Names, meanings, and development strategies of Beijing’s periphery,” in What’s in a Name? Talking about Urban Peripheries, Richard Harris and Charlotte Vorms (eds), p.316-333. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ren, Xuefei. 2016. “Citizenship in China and India: A Comparison,” in The Making of Vibrant Cities, Mumbai First (ed), p.59-63. New Delhi: Rupa Publications India.
Ren, Xuefei. 2015. “Pouvoir municipal et crise fiscal urbaine aux États-Unis, en Chine et en Inde,” in Tous Responsables? Chroniques de la Gouvernance, p.79-87. Paris: Belles Lettres.
Ren, Xuefei. 2015. “Forward to the past: Historical preservation in globalizing Shanghai,” in Urban Redevelopment and Citizen Participation: Comparisons of Japan, Korea, and China, Koyo Tajima (ed), p.68-105.
Tokyo: CUON.
Ren, Xuefei. 2013. “Pékin 2008: Les jeux Olympiques, les espaces de flux,” in La coupe est pleine: Les désastres économiques et sociaux des grands événements sportifs, Ouvrage collectif, PubliCetim no° 38, CETIM (Centre
Europe-Tiers Monde), Geneva.
Ren, Xuefei. 2013. “Architecture as branding: Mega-project developments in Beijing,” in Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings, Bent Flyvbjerg (ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ren, Xuefei. 2013. “Urban restructuring and citizens in Asia: Shanghai,” in Urban Sociology: An Introduction, Yasushi Matumoto (ed), p.234-243. Tokyo: Yuhikaku.
Ren, Xuefei. 2013. “Urban Restructuring and citizens in Asia: Mumbai,” in Urban Sociology: An Introduction, Yasushi Matumoto (ed), p.243-250. Tokyo: Yuhikaku.
Ren, Xuefei and Liza Weinstein. 2013. “Urban governance, mega-projects, and scalar transformations in China and India,” in Locating Right to the City in the Global South, Tony Samara, Shenjing He, and Guo
Chen (eds), p.107-126. New York: Routledge.
Ren, Xuefei. 2012. “Rights to housing: Developing societies,” in The International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home, Vol. 6, by Susan J. Smith (ed), p.158-163. Oxford: Elsevier.
Ren, Xuefei. 2011. “Dancing with the state: Migrant workers’ NGOs and the remaking of urban citizenship in China,” in Remaking Urban Citizenship: Organizations, Institutions and the Right to the City, Michael Peter
Smith and Michael McQuarrie (eds), p.99-108. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.
Ren, Xuefei. 2011. “From Peking to Beijing: Production of centrality in the global age,” in Global Downtowns, Gary McDonogh and Marina Peterson (eds), p.48-64. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Ren, Xuefei. 2010. “Territorial expansion and state rescaling: A critique of suburbanization studies,” in Suburbanization in Global Perspective, Mark Clapson and Ray Hutchison (eds), p.351-370. Bingley, UK:
Emerald Books.
Ren, Xuefei. 2010. “World-systems perspective,” in Encyclopedia of Urban Studies, Ray Hutchison (ed), p.969-973. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Ren, Xuefei. 2010. “Olympic Beijing: Reflections on urban space and global connectivity,” in The Beijing Olympics, Promoting China: Soft and Hard Power in Global Politics, Kevin Caffrey (ed). London: Routledge.
Ren, Xuefei. 2009. “Transnational architectural production in downtown Beijing,” in Global Movements in the Asia Pacific, Pookong Kee and Hidetaka Yoshimatsu (eds), p.341-368. Singapore: World Scientific
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