/Apologies for cross-posting/

CFP - Multiple urban transitions: exploring the connections
 
Session proposal for the EUGEO 2011 Congress 'Geography's stake in Europe:
People, environment, politics', 29-31 August 2011, London, UK at the Royal
Geographical Society (with IBG), http://www.eugeo.org/index.php/congress

Session organisers:
Stefan Bouzarovski / Ludek Sykora
University of Birmingham / Charles University in Prague
 
Seldom has a subject received as much academic scrutiny as the
spatialities of the 'transition' from a centrally-planned to a
market-based economy in Eastern and Central Europe. Most of the literature
on the subject has focused on the role of locally-contingent conditions in
shaping the paths of transformation. Geographers have frequently
questioned the notion that post-communist regions and cities are
undergoing a linear movement from one state to another, emphasising the
existence of diverse 'transformation' trajectories instead.
 
However, this is not the only transition that the discipline of geography
has been concerned with: there has been an extensive body of work, for
example, on the relationship between urban change and demographic
transitions, as well as transitions from the managerial to the
entrepreneurial city, and between modes of regulation and regimes of
accumulation. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the
transition to a low carbon economy that cities will have to undertake in
order to address climate change and energy security concerns. Many debates
concerning this process have been influenced by approaches initially
formulated in science and technology studies, as well as bottom-up
developments related to social movements.
 
The literatures on post-communist and other urban transitions have rarely
communicated with each other. The transition experience of post-communist
states is not invoked in discussions about the political decisions and
policy steps associated with other transitions. Considering that
geographers have widely insisted on the use of the concept
'transformation' to encapsulate post-communist restructuring, it is
necessary to ask whether there should be an equivalent move to challenge
the conceptual foundations of current low-carbon and socio-technical
transitions. This becomes particularly important in light of the fact that
insights into the spatial implications of path-dependency and lock-in as
well as path shaping, particularly evident in many Eastern and Central
European cities over the past twenty years, remain marginalised in
theorisations of the movement towards a low-carbon urban and regional
system.
 
This session will seek to address such knowledge gaps, by interrogating
the relevance of past and present post-communist transformations to
'other' urban transitions, particularly present and future low carbon and
energy transitions. Conceptual, theoretical as well as empirical papers
that can explore different transitions and speculate on their mutual
connections will be welcome. Topics might include:
- The theorisation and conceptualisation of transitions and transformations
- The ways in which the post-communist restructuring process has
influenced the theorisation of transition, revolutionary and evolutionary
change, path-dependency and path-shaping, especially in terms of the ways
in which this knowledge be relevant for other fields/arenas?
- The broader lessons learned from the knowledge about the second
demographic transition and urban restructuring in transition cities of CEE
- The relationships between neoliberalism and the entrepreneurial city,
and the transition to a low carbon sustainable city
- Transitions from cities to city regions and polynucleated urban systems
- Transitions in realities and transitions in conceptualisations, thoughts
and theories.
 
Session slots will be 1hr 40 minutes long to accommodate a maximum of 5
papers of 20 min each, including questions. If you would like to propose a
contribution, please send the completed paper submission form
(downloadable from 
http://www.rgs.org/NR/rdonlyres/8FF38388-0BDB-466D-9AD3-A7A54AD27A3F/0/EUGE
O2011_PaperProposalForm.doc) to Stefan Bouzarovski
([log in to unmask]) and Ludek Sykora ([log in to unmask]) by the
31st of March. The session will address all the three congress themes:
Sustainability and the Environment; People, Politics and Place; New World,
New Europe, modernity and globalisation.


-- 
Dr Stefan Bouzarovski
Senior Lecturer and Second Year Geography Programme Tutor
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom