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With 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? Session organisers: 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 response to this financial squeeze a wide range of new forms of governance, ownership and management of urban green spaces are emerging, 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 creation 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). 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, Tuesday, 30th August till Friday, 2nd September 2016. 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/