Reminder: The final deadline is next Monday, 15th February 2016!
With the usual apologies for cross-posting...
Call for Papers
Annual Conference RGS-IBG 2016
Contested urban green spaces in the ‘austerity city’: Re-politicising the
environment and commoning public spaces?
Valerie Viehoff, Bettina LeLong and Alexander Follmann
The UK Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment declared in
2009 that ‘green spaces and places are the life support system of our towns
and cities. It is this green infrastructure [...] that makes crowded urban
areas liveable and urban life environmentally, economically and socially
viable. Green infrastructure is a public service to which everyone has a
right.’
A growing body of literature has since demonstrated that urban green spaces
– including for instance, urban parks and forests, vacant plots, brownfield
sites, city farms, river paths, road-side trees or planters, community
gardens or allotments - play an important role in providing ecosystem
services and in improving mental and public health.
Yet, at the same time, funding pressures are increasing, with local
governments across Europe facing various forms of ‘austerity measures’. In
the UK 86% of parks managers reported in 2014 that they had suffered cuts to
revenue budgets since 2010 and expected this trend to continue and 45% of
local authorities (LA) reported considering selling parks or green spaces or
outsourcing their management (Heritage Lottery Fund, 2014).
The financial squeeze has resulted in a wide range of new forms of
governance, ownership and management of urban green spaces, including for
instance the privatisation of parks, the outsourcing of the management to
private companies, the involvement of philanthropists and volunteers (e.g.
‘Friends of the Park’ groups) and the emergence of new ‘urban commons’.
This has lead to a paradox, where on the one hand, we witness a
de-politicisation of (public) urban green spaces as they are being
transformed into Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS), where political
protest is prohibited and other civil rights are curtailed and, on the
other, growing protest and contestation over their use, development or
destruction (e.g Gezi Park in Istanbul, Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin, Go Ape
in London Battersea).
The UK can be considered at the forefront of the neoliberal project of
‘rolling back the state’ with regards to public green spaces provision,
which has resulted in a particularly wide range of alternative funding and
governance solutions. Other countries may, however, be seeking alternative
approaches or provide different solutions.
This session aims to advance our theoretical understand and
conceptualisation of urban green spaces and their contestation. We are
interested in contributions putting forward theoretical arguments or
presenting case studies from the Global North or Global South and from a
wide range of disciplinary backgrounds.
Suggested topics for contributions include, but are not limited to:
• theoretical conceptualisation of urban green spaces
• urban environmental governance
• Re-/de-politisation of public green spaces
• the potential and limitations of urban commons and commoning
• ecosystem-services
• public health benefits of urban green spaces
• exclusionary or inclusionary practices in urban green spaces
• questions of citizenship, democracy and environmental justice
• new and old forms of urban agriculture
• social capital and the governance of urban green spaces
• ethnic minorities as users or stakeholders of urban green spaces
• relationship between neoliberal urbanisation and urban green spaces
• green activism and protests
Format: The proposed format of the session is for a paper session consisting
of 4 x 20 minute papers including questions. This will allow enough space
for 20 minutes of general discussions at the end.
Deadline: Proposals for papers should be sent to one of the session
organisers by Monday, 15th February 2016.
Proposals: Please include a title, a short abstract of 250 words and your
full contact details.
Session organisers: Valerie Viehoff ([log in to unmask]), Bettina
LeLong ([log in to unmask]) and Alexander Follmann
([log in to unmask]).
The Annual Conference of the RGS (with IBG) will take place in London, at
the Royal Geographical Society and Imperial College from Tuesday, 30th
August till Friday, 2nd September 2016.
Further details about the conference at:
http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+International+Conference+2016.htm
Dr. Valerie Viehoff
Department of Geography
Bonn University
Meckenheimer Allee 166
53115 Bonn
Germany
Email: [log in to unmask]
Now published:
Viehoff & Poynter (eds) Mega-event Cities: Urban Legacies of Global Sports
Events (Ashgate, 2015) http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472440174
And also new:
Poynter, Viehoff & Li (eds) The London Olympics and Urban Development. The
Mega-Event City (Routledge, 2015)
http://www.tandf.net/books/details/9781315758862/
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