Martin Murray

Professor of Urban Planning, Professor of Sociology
Teaching Areas
Global and Comparative Planning, Social Justice and Urban Development, Land Use and Environmental Planning
Connect
Office: 2368

Martin Murray is a professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he focuses on planning in developing countries. He also is an adjunct professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies in U-M’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Murray began his academic career as a sociologist focused on urban geography. His current research engages the fields of urban studies and planning, global urbanism, cultural geography, distressed urbanism, development, historical sociology, and African studies. Specifically, he focuses on two fields of inquiry: first, the trajectories of global urbanism at the start of the 21st century, and second, the turn toward master-planned, holistically-designed “private cities” built from scratch, especially those currently under construction or in the planning stages in urban Africa.

In addition to six books and three co-edited volumes, Murray has written nearly 70 journal articles and book chapters that focus on diverse geographical areas of the world at different historical periods. After his first book, The Development of Capitalism in Colonial Indochina, 1870-1940 (University of California Press, 1980), Murray pursued a deep and abiding interest in the politics of South Africa and has published on a range of topics, including class formation and rural transformation, the transition from apartheid to parliamentary democracy, city building, and urban planning.

Murray has completed two books on city building and spatial politics in Johannesburg after apartheid. The first, Taming the Disorderly City (Cornell University Press, 2008), examines the challenges for urban planning in Johannesburg after the end of apartheid. The second, City of Extremes: Spatial Politics in Johannesburg (Duke University Press, 2011), looks at the city’s spatiality of wealth and poverty. The third installment in the intended trilogy, Panic City: Crime and the Fear industries in Johannesburg (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2019), investigates the intersection of public policing and private security in contemporary Johannesburg.

In addition to his books and chapters in edited volumes, Murray’s research has appeared in a number of influential journals, including the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Environment & Planning A, Cultural Geography, Canadian Journal of African Studies, International Sociology, Journal of Southern African Studies, and Journal of African History. His most recent book is Commemorating and Forgetting: Challenges for a New South Africa (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

Murray received a Bachelor or Arts in philosophy from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Arts in philosophy and a PhD in sociology from the University of Texas, Austin.

Courses

URP 800, Section 1
Winter 2025
Instructors: Martin Murray
ARCH 527, Section 1
Winter 2025
Instructors: Lars Junghans, Olaia Chivite Amigo, Mohsen Vatandoost
ARCH 509, Section 11
Fall 2024
Instructors: Mohsen Vatandoost
URP 571, Section 1
Fall 2024
Instructors: Martin Murray
URP 573, Section 1
Winter 2024
Instructors: Martin Murray
URP 800
Fall 2020
Instructors: Martin Murray
URP 573
Winter 2021
Instructors: Martin Murray
URP 571
Fall 2021
Instructors: Martin Murray
URP 573
Winter 2022
Instructors: Martin Murray
URP 571
Fall 2023
Instructors: Martin Murray