GlobalCORRIDOR: Rethinking Corridors and Urban Life at Sheffield

In the heart of Sheffield’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the GlobalCORRIDOR project is emerging as a transformative force in urban scholarship. Funded by a €1.48 million European Research Council Starting Grant since July 2021, this ambitious five-year initiative seeks to unravel the complex ways in which large-scale infrastructure corridors are reshaping cities and social life across continents.

Techno-Social Differentiation in Urban Corridors

At its core, GlobalCORRIDOR examines how railway lines, highways, pipelines, and ports—journaled as “corridors”—are not just physical networks. They are powerful techno‑territorial assemblages that cut through cities, restructuring spaces, economies, and even senses of belonging. Think of corridors as conveyor belts of capital and technology—but also as arenas of exclusion, inequality, and everyday complexity.

Comparative Fieldwork: East Africa, South Asia, Mediterranean

Sheffield researchers, led by Dr Jonathan Silver and joined by scholars like Dr Zhengli Huang, are conducting comparative case studies across several corridors, including East Africa (notably EACOP), South Asia, and the Mediterranean. Their goal? To grasp how corridor investments interact with local urban contexts—affecting who benefits, who is marginalized, and how people navigate altered geographies.

Everyday Lives Amid Mega-Project Investments

GlobalCORRIDOR isn’t limited to mapping hardware or budgets. It zooms into the everyday, ethnographic experiences of corridor-affected communities. As project literature describes, the research “investigates the everyday experiences of Corridor Urbanization within urban regions…to understand the differentiated ways in which infrastructure is operated and accessed”. Whether it's locals adapting to a new bypass chopping through their quarter or slum dwellers seeing opportunities and disruption from nearby logistics hubs, the focus is intimate and streetside.

LECTURE SERIES: Bringing Theory to Life

As part of its academic outreach, the Urban Institute has launched a hybrid lecture series:

• Lecture 1: “The Multiple Urban Histories of the Corridor” tracks trade and corridor urbanisation across eras—from classical Athens and Mughal Lahore to medieval Mombasa and industrial Manchester.

• Lecture 2: “Corridor Urbanisation: A New Global Geography?” dives into over 70 corridor initiatives worldwide, mapping how new logistics networks produce novel urban regions.

• Dialogue Session: “Global Urbanisms of the Corridor” brings together scholars from Sheffield, East Africa, Italy, Greece, Kenya, Pakistan, and beyond to compare real-world experiences and policy implications reddit.com.

These sessions—held across November 2024—underscore GlobalCORRIDOR’s aim to spark deep theoretical and applied reflection about corridors in the broader urban discourse.

Towards an Urban Theory of Corridors

What sets GlobalCORRIDOR apart is its ambition to build a global urban theory of corridor urbanization—one that centers on inequalities, access, and the everyday rhythms of corridor-affected residents . The project argues that as corridors proliferate—through Belt & Road, EACOP, CPEC, and similar programs—they shape how cities grow, who thrives, and who gets left behind.

Shaping Future Urban Studies

By June 2026, GlobalCORRIDOR aims to provide:

• A historical and spatial mapping of corridor projects.

• Ethnographic insights into daily life near corridors.

• Analysis of techno-social differentiation in access, reliability, and exclusion.

• A comprehensive framework for future comparative research on corridors.

In doing so, the University of Sheffield’s Urban Institute is paving a path toward reimagining urbanism in the 21st century—one where the pulse of massive infrastructure meets the daily pulse of city residents. GlobalCORRIDOR doesn’t just traverse geography; it traverses spatial justice.