Urbanist; Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, London (UK) What kinds of survival tactics are being developed by city dwellers who live in marginalized environments that are not stable, orderly or sustaining? How do these conditions produce not only conflicts, defenses and vulnerabilities, but also skills and possibilities for outward mobility? AbdouMaliq Simone is an urbanist in the broad sense that his work focuses on various communities, powers, cultural expressions, governance and planning discourses, spaces and times in cities across the world. Simone is presently Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Key publications include In Whose Image? Political Islam and Urban Practices in Sudan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), For the City Yet to Come: Changing Urban Life in Four African Cities (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004) and Movements at the Crossroads: Urbanization from the Peripheries (Forthcoming: Routledge, 2009). In 2002 he gave a keynote lecture within Platform4_Documenta11 in Lagos, Nigeria.