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*Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting 29 March – 2 April 2016, San Francisco* Reimagining the urban: Hopeful trajectories for remaking the city Organisers* Ragnhild Claesson (Malmö University, Sweden), Zahra Hamidi (Malmö University, Sweden), Vítor Peiteado Fernández (Malmö University, Sweden; Roskilde University, Denmark). Is it possible to create hopeful alternatives to the neoliberal city? Literature on the dynamics and mechanisms of the on-going neoliberalisation of the city and its consequences is extensive—e.g. dynamics of racialization, displacement, democratic impoverishment and expansion of inequalities (Swyngedouw et al. 2002; Smith,2005; Fainstein, 2010). Besides, new knowledge and spaces initially produced by solidarity networks, activist movements or governance projects of partnerships with NGOs, are often co-opted and unequally distributed in a capitalist logic (bicycle services, urban gardening or art are good examples). This session takes a wide look on alternative strategies that can come together to develop trajectories which enable imagining hopeful urban futures beyond the neoliberal city. The neoliberal project, as Harvey (2005) refers to it, shows strong capability to survive in mainly two ways: through appropriation and repression. First, neoliberalism shows great ability to appropriate and empty antagonist and alternative expressions that question neoliberal development. Second, when alternative actions pose a direct threat to the survival of the system itself, repression in the form of police measures, discourse, etc, has been a valuable tool to control and deactivate those alternatives with the objective of maintaining the neoliberal project. This way, alternative actions and proposals (such as squatting) implemented by grass root movements are continuously attacked and pressured to deactivate the antagonist threat that they pose to the dominating economic and political system. Nevertheless, these alternative actions should not be discarded as pointless, but acknowledged as necessary moves which challenge neoliberalism’s survival, not only through immediate interventions, but also by continuously reimagining alternative futures. Such moves can take a multitude of forms, from activism and political, social and spatial interventions, to theoretical alternatives such as ideas of diverse economies or degrowth (Purcell, 2008; Brenner et al. 2011; Harvey, 2013). This session aims to facilitate a platform to reflect, scrutinise and seek alternatives to neoliberal politics and urban development. We welcome proposals with examples of alternative actions, reimaginations or lived experience, as well as proposals from a theoretical perspective. Therefore, this CFP encourages the submission of abstracts for papers focusing on the construction of alternatives to reimagine the neoliberal city at any scale—e.g. neighbourhood, local, regional or global—from different perspectives and disciplines—e.g. economic, political, geographical, aesthetic or social. Suggested topics are, but not limited to: • Empowerment of underrepresented actors • Enhancing the right to the city in theory and practice • Just mobility • Experiences of challenging unjust power relations • Re-appropriation of public spaces • De-commodification of housing • Alternative architectural imaginations and interventions Submissions: Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words by email to Vítor Peiteado Fernández ([log in to unmask]) by Thursday 15th October 2015. Successful submissions will be contacted by 20th October 2015 and will be expected to register and submit their abstracts online at the AAG website by October 29th 2015 ahead of a session proposal deadline of 18th November 2015. Please note a range of registration fees will apply and must be paid before the formal submission of abstracts to AAG. *The organisers are PhD students within the research environments ‘Migration, Urbanisation and Societal change’ (MUSA) and ‘Critical Urban Sustainability Hub’ (CRUSH) at Malmö University, SE and Roskilde University, DK.