Apologies for second posting, forgot to give a deadline last time!
Conference of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers,
August 26-28th 2009, Manchester
Call for Papers on:
Planning ‘Smart’ City-Regions in an Age of Neoliberalizing Urbanism
Session sponsored by the Planning and Environment Research Group (PERG)
Session Convenors:
David Gibbs, Hull University, England
Rob Krueger, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts,USA
Gordon MacLeod, Durham University, England, UK
Any student looking to gain some rudimentary understanding of the form,
character and planning of contemporary cities across the global urban
landscape could be forgiven for being a touch bewildered by some of the mixed
messages available. On one level, they would be informed that, amid the
purportedly inescapable ascendence of a neoliberal global political economy,
cities are increasingly being subjected to the vagaries of market rule, or,
perhaps more accurately, a mode of ‘state-authored market fundamentalism’
(Peck, 2004). Some of the most notable economic and environmental impacts
of this neoliberal urbanism (Wilson, 2004) sees urban regions being further
stretched in the form of untrammeled suburban and ex-urban sprawl and the
formation of private sector-led edge cities, alongside a fragmentation or
splintering vis-a-vis a rise in privatized housing communities and gentrified
enclaves, all leading to unavoidable increases in automobile travel and a
related erosion of public space and the public realm. This neoliberal urbanism
also appears to be embedding in erstwhile ‘statist’ districts of the city, not
least through the third-wave gentrification of social housing. And, notably, it is
also fostering heightened social inequalities and an intense ‘enclosure’ of cities
in the global south, as highlighted in recent work by Mike Davis and Loic
Wacquant. Crucially, this is also a landscape that implicates the decision-
making of planners, albeit they themselves are increasingly subjectified
with ‘entrepreneurial’ values (Sandercock, 1998).
And yet, at the same time our keenly intrepid student would encounter a
whole range of debates within geography, planning, and environmental studies
pertaining to the creation of ‘smart growth’ and the fostering of ‘eco-
towns’, ‘creative cities’, ‘urban villages’, ‘new urbanist’ developments, ‘master-
planned’ communities, and informational superhighways and post-industrial
corridors of growth. Each of these examples – and they increasingly operate
on a global scale – emphasizes a decisive role for planners working together
with developers, infrastructure providers, key economic actors and political
elites, all with aspirations to create and shape an economically creative,
ecologically sustainable, and socially inclusive urban-regional environment.
Often this also aims to cultivate a renewal of the civic realm, and perhaps
even a reversal of uncontrolled automobile-dependent suburban sprawl. In
some crucial respects, these aspirational discourses would seem to imply either
a departure from, or at least some compromising of, a market-fundamentalist
neoliberal urban landscape and vernacular.
All of which raises some searching questions about how, as scholars of
planning and environmental geography, we are to evaluate these seemingly
competing claims. For instance, how far do strategies to induce creative
cities, smart growth and new urbanist principles represent a meaningful
departure from neoliberalism? Or, alternatively, do these ostensibly progressive
moments in the planning process represent a further embedding of privatized
power, in the process de-politicizing potential conflict, and fostering fresh
opportunities for developers to realize surplus value? This session is keen to
explore these tensions, and seeks papers which examine the connections
between ‘local’ transitions and the ‘general’ urbanization process. We would
also particularly welcome papers the that explore new emergent paradigms
of ‘smart’ urban development, and contributions along the following themes
would be most welcome:
• Local and regional sustainable development
• Smart growth
• New urbanism
• Compact urban development
• Green infrastructure planning
• Transportation and mobility
• Public-private government/governance
• Quality of life
• Social equity and inclusion in planning
• Environmental justice
• Progressive or predatory planning
Abstracts and expressions of interest with full contact details should be
emailed by 6th February 2009 at the latest to one of the organizers at the
following email addresses:
David Gibbs: [log in to unmask]
Rob Krueger: [log in to unmask]
Gordon MacLeod: [log in to unmask]
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