Re-imagining Urban Waters: 1 day workshop, 3rd July, Bristol
Call for contributions and participation:
Human relationships with water are increasingly becoming the focus of academic, political, and public debates. Contestation over flood management has foregrounded renewed questions about how we live with water, provoking the emergence of new publics with an interest in asking ethical questions about future water management. This workshop seeks to engage with questions about what value frames might shape future relationships with urban waters and what role (if any) should social and environmental ethics play in these. Arguably, the prevailing imagination of resilience has dominated debates on how we live with water - debates that focus on the cultivation of certain kind of citizenship that sits neatly within neoliberal rationalities; a citizenship that often fails to address the possibilities of more radical social and environmental transformation. Whilst water surplus and scarcity seem likely to become a backdrop to future urban living, we are also putting high expectations on the services that water can provide for both human and non-human environments (including flood management, habitat, climate mitigation, urban agriculture and recreation).
This workshop aims to open questions about the hydro-social relationships of the future and open discussions about progressive approaches to living with and managing urban waters. We will bring together academics, community organisers, and practitioners to engage in critical dialogue to challenge contemporary urban water management practice and consider ways in which we might engage with, participate in, and manage urban waters in the future. We welcome contributions to this one-day workshop in Bristol. We are particularly interested in short paper presentations and reflections on current projects and activities, we also encourage contributions that include or adopt alternative formats (such as film and art).
We welcome contributions that engage with urban water and questions of how we cultivate transformative transitions that go beyond the ‘bounce-back-ability bandwagon’*. Contributions may look to (but are not restricted by) the following questions:
• How can we live with more and/or less water in the urban environments of the future?
• What human values and non-human actions will shape future discourses on urban water?
• What are the possibilities for more environmentally and socially just relationships with water?
• What socio-technical waterscapes and hydro-publics might emerge?
• What kinds of relationships need to be cultivated to move toward water sensitive cities?
• Can resilience be more than bouncing back?
• Where and how are informal and experimental practices offering alternative solutions?
If you would like to participate in this workshop and/or have an idea to contribute, please get in touch with the organisers [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
Participation is free but places are limited. We have a number of small travel bursaries to assist participation for those on low wages or without institutional funding.
* Diprose (2015) Resilience is Futile, Soundings
Dr Kerry Burton
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography
Geography and Environmental Management
University of the West of England
Coldharbour Lane
Bristol BS16 1QY
Twitter: @feralgeographer
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