Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, April 21–25, 2015, Chicago
Travelling landscapes of urban sprawl
Organizers: Mattias Qviström & Vera Vicenzotti, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
While the discourse on urban sprawl is surprisingly homogenous in the Western world, the landscapes of urban sprawl differ substantially from country to country. Consequently, a North American, a Swedish and a German planner are likely to agree upon a list of the detrimental consequences of sprawl and why it should be curbed, but they are much less likely to agree on which landscapes should be labeled urban sprawl. Furthermore, there is an unbalance between research that reiterates and passes on a (seemingly) global discourse on sprawl and case studies providing site-specific histories of sprawl in which the local history, planning and landscape play a role.
This session aims to explore the tensions between discourses and imaginaries of sprawl (which travel relatively easily and quickly, but may get modified along the way, cf. Said 1983), and the much slower, messier, and partly site-specific landscapes of sprawl (e.g. Moore 2013; Qviström 2012). This is not simply a collide between global discourses and local landscapes – but between imaginaries that travel well and landscapes whose obduracy, history, ecologies, and customs make swift transformations unlikely. We believe that recent methodological and epistemological work on comparative studies (e.g. McFarlane 2012; Robinson 2011), and relational geography on situated knowledge (e.g. de Laet and Mol 2000; Latour 1999), translation and mobility (e.g. research on mobile urbanism by McCann and Ward 2011, on portable landscapes by della Dora 2009, and on policy mobility by Harris and Moore 2013) have provided very valuable insights into travelling landscapes of urban sprawl.
In this session we wish to explore the potential of landscape studies to provide counter-stories to the monolithic account of urban sprawl in the Western world. We are particularly interested in studies that shed light on the interactions between concepts, discourses and imaginaries of urban sprawl on the one hand and the much slower travel of landscapes on the other – whether they are framed as in depth case studies or explicit comparisons.
We are thus seeking case studies and theoretical contributions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- the travel of imaginaries of urban sprawl;
- stories of imaginaries or discourses of urban sprawl that did not travel well;
- methodological and epistemological studies of comparisons within landscape studies of urban sprawl;
- portable landscapes and policies of importance for urban sprawl.
If you are interested in this paper session, please submit an abstract (not more than 250 words) including the title of the proposed contribution, name of author(s), and contact information to Vera Vicenzotti ([log in to unmask]) and Mattias Qviström ([log in to unmask]) by Friday, 17 October 2014. Further information about the abstract submission process can be found on the AAG’s website under http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers.
References
de Laet, Marianne, Mol, Annemarie. 2000. The Zimbabwe bush pump: mechanics of a fluid technology. Social Studies of Science, 30: 225–263.
della Dora, Veronica. 2009. Travelling landscape-objects. Progress in Human Geography 33 (3): 334–354.
Harris, Andrew and Moore, Susan. 2013. Planning Histories and Practices of Circulating Urban Knowledge. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 37 (5): 1499–509.
Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandoras hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Harward Univ Press.
McCann, Eugene and Ward, Kevin (eds.). 2011. Mobile urbanism: Cities and policymaking in the global age. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
McFarlane, Colin. 2010. The Comparative City: Knowledge, Learning, Urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34 (4): 725–742.
Moore, Susan. 2013. What’s Wrong with Best Practice? Questioning the Typification of New Urbanism. Urban Studies 50 (11): 2371–2387.
Robinson, Jennifer. 2011. Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35 (1): 1–23.
Qviström, Mattias. 2012. Contested Landscapes of Urban Sprawl: Landscape Protection and Regional Planning in Scania, Sweden, 1932-1947. Landscape Research 37 (4): 399–415.
Said, Edward W. 1983. Traveling Theory. In The World, the Text, and the Critic, ed. Said, Edward W.: 226–247; 306-307. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
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