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DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
Seminar Announcement
LONDON WOMEN AND PLANNING FORUM
The 24-hour City
The London Women and Planning Forum (formerly of the Women's Design
Service) is an information network based at Queen Mary for planning
officers, architects, academics, students and community and voluntary
organisations involved with urban environment and gender equality
issues. It aims to change and improve the position of women in relation
to planning issues; to provide a productive opportunity to share
experiences of problems and difficulties encountered by women in the
field; and to promote feminist thinking in planning organisations and
urban studies. The Forum meets three times throughout the year to
discuss contemporary urban issues with a gender perspective.
Our first seminar of 2003 addresses the question of the 24-hour city.
The 24-hour city concept is a vision of a vibrant, urbane city that
brings together culture and commerce for all of its inhabitants. There
is certainly excitement over this night and day city: a symbol of the
triumph of the arts, of an intelligence based economy, and as a space of
collaboration. The afterdeck urban playgrounds are unleashed by the
deregulation of the night-time leisure economy. The urban night is a
space of sensuous experience, a space of specific pleasure and danger.
And at the same time, the world of work painfully toils into the dawn.
At the edge of culture and innovation, the 24-hour city slays its old
shadows.
But this picture of the 24-hour city is clearly out of focus. Its
health deteriorates as strategies of deregulation permit the growth of a
market-led destruction of diversity, and produce a monoculture of
licensed premises and fast-food outlets that scratch away at the
pleasures of the urban night. There is certainly conflict between the
exclusivity of the night-time economy of youth culture and the dream of
the urbane 24-hour city.
The eyes on our street are glazed over with dissatisfaction.
Dissatisfaction over the disorder of aggressive hedonism on the street
and its effects on residential amenity. Dissatisfaction about crime and
the fear of crime. Dissatisfaction that the most profound outward
exclusionary effects of this 24-hour urbanism are exacted upon those
most disempowered in society.
This meeting of the London Women and Planning Forum aims to address the
questions surrounding the 24-hour city and ways of life within the
city. It also has the objective of creating a dialogue between
academics and practitioners working with the urban environment. The
seminar asks:
- What are the problems of the social, cultural and industrial 24-hour
urban economies, and what can be done to address them?
- What does 24-hour city have to offer more than a youth-dominated drink
and drugs dance culture in bars and clubs?
- How can the 24-hour city satisfy the social needs and aspirations of
women in local communities?
- What are the gendered safety implications of the 24-hour city?
- Why is the economic/social/cultural role of civic entrepreneurs in the
24-hour city?
- How can local stakeholders speak out for the preservation and
promotion of diversity and residential and visitor amenity?
- And what is the role of planning in the 24-hour urban economy,
especially around questions of municipal regulation?
There will be three keynote presentations by women in the professional
fields of planning and urban studies, followed by parallel discussions
sessions based around the talks. Our confirmed speakers are:
KIMBERLY PAUMIER (Camden Council) "Managing the 24-hour economy"
MARION ROBERTS (University of Westminster) "Living the 24-hour city - 48
hours in the life of Old Compton Street, Soho"
HARRIET WILKINS (Women's Design Service) "Making safer places"
and ALISON BLUNT of Queen Mary, University of London will chair.
The conference will take place in the Department of Geography, Queen
Mary, University of London (Mile End Campus) on the afternoon of
WEDNESDAY 29 JANUARY 2003 (1.30-5.00pm)
Seminar Timetable
1.30pm Registration
2.00pm Presentations and questions
3.30pm Afternoon tea
3.45pm Discussion groups
4.45pm Summation
Seminar registration fees are as follows:
Statutory - £30
Academics and voluntary - £10
Concessions - £5
To find out more information and to download a registration form for the
seminar, visit the LWPF web page at www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/lwpf/ (online
from mid-December) or contact Christopher Shippen, Forum Administrator
at [log in to unmask]
A copy of the registration form should also be attached.
Yours sincerely
Christopher Shippen
--
Christopher Shippen
Department of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
London E1 4NS
United Kingdom
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Office: +44 (0)20 7882 3363
Fax: +44 (0)20 8981 6276
Web: http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/
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