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Final Call for Papers: RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London (31st August - 2nd September 2016) Session title: “Emergent urban spaces: A planetary perspective” Session sponsor: Developing Areas Research Group (DARG) and Planning and Environment Research Group (PERG) Deadline for abstract submissions: 12 February 2016 Session convenors: Paola Alfaro d'Alençon (Technical University Berlin, Germany) Ana Claudia Cardoso (Federal University of Para, Brazil) Philipp Horn (Open University, UK) Session abstract: The session intends to explore the relevance of, and the potential for creating a nexus between two dominant approaches in contemporary urban theory for research and planning practice in cities of the global South, namely: Planetary urbanisation/ global urbanism: With its main advocate being Brenner (2014), this is a neo-Lefebvrean approach, which intends to overcome dichotomies such as North and South, developed and developing, and city and countryside. It challenges bounded urbanisms and holds the key assumption that in our contemporary world everything is urban. According to Brenner (2014), the urban describes the concentration of infrastructure and populations in cities (implosions) but, simultaneously, it refers to urban features in non-urban settings (explosions). Hence, the urban represents a global condition characterised by a set of politico-economic relations associated with processes of extractivism, neoliberalism, capitalist land management, etc. Though an increasingly dominant approach in urban studies, planetary urbanisation perspectives also pose new challenges: Current research mainly set out a new research agenda but has not provided a sufficient theoretical and methodological ‘tool kit’ which allows for its application. In addition, planetary urbanism’s universalising vocabulary can be criticised for leaving hardly any room in deciphering new and ‘emergent urban spaces’. In a world where everything is urban, are there still any particularities about Northern, Southern, Western, or Eastern urbanisms? How do policy makers and planners involved in the development and implementation of a new ‘global urban agenda’ address planetary urbanisation? Where have the particularities of cities gone? Ordinary cities/ worlding/ comparative urbanism/ assemblages: The particularities of cities – rarely addressed in work on planetary urbanisation – represent the centre of analysis of an alternative approach in contemporary urban theory which is situated in post-structuralism and post-colonialism. Initially a critique of ‘Northern’ and ‘Western’ schools of urbanism, advocators of this approach call for a deconstruction of global models and emphasise the need to shed light on the uniqueness and particularities of ‘ordinary cities’ (Robinson 2005) anywhere in the world – be it in the North, South, East or West. As each city is considered unique, no general urban-theoretical generalisations are applicable. This new particularism in urban studies has been criticised as being overly descriptive and almost anti-theoretical (Peck 2015). Yet, its advocates offer rich and ethnographic accounts on the unique characteristics of unique phenomena in specific urban settings. Indigenous communal land management in Bolivia or Ecuador versus community land trusts in the UK or the US; from bungalow and shed dwellers in the UK to slum dwellers in South Africa and Bangladesh. Yet, do these individual observations really represent starting points for new concepts and frameworks to understand global urbanisms? Does research on the ‘ordinary city’ really help overcoming South-North/ East-West dichotomies? We invite papers which draw on the above mentioned theories and intend to address and overcome their limitations. We are particularly interested in theoretically-informed, methodologically innovative and practice-relevant papers which address the following questions: 1) How can we disentangle planetary urbanisation and apply it as a research framework to the context-specific challenges faced by many ‘ordinary cities’? 2) How can we move from the particular and the uniqueness of ‘ordinary cities’ to the development of concepts and urban vocabularies that can help us make sense of emergent global urbanisms everywhere? 3) How can we work on a new ‘global urban agenda’ that is sensitive to local particularities and responsive to planetary challenges and problems? 4) How can we create a nexus of Northern- and Southern-focused work on topics such as informality, poverty, land management, and the ‘right to the city? How can we generate a more unified conceptual vocabulary on these topics? Submission of abstracts Proposals including name and institutional affiliation of authors, title and abstract of no more than 250 words should be submitted by e-mail to Philipp Horn ([log in to unmask]), Ana Claudia Cardoso ([log in to unmask]), and Paola Alfaro d'Alençon ([log in to unmask]) no later than 12 February 2016. References Brenner, N. 2014. Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin, Jovis. Peck, J. 2015 ‘Cities beyond compare?’ Regional Studies 49(1), 160-182. Robinson, J. 2005. Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. London, Routledge