Monthly Archives: March 2017

Call for Papers: Inclusive Placemaking

7th – 8th September 2017, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester UK

Special Stream: Museums & Places*

Conference Chairs: Dr Ares Kalandides, Dr Steve Millington and Professor Cathy Parker

The repercussions of the 2008 global financial crisis continue to reverberate across the world, presenting major challenges to local development. In many places, after decades of regeneration, the money has simply run out. This is an era of austerity, but one where responsibility for prosperity (or failure) is being devolved and localised through current political agendas. This coincides with calls to take back control, both in the UK and USA. However, the local capacity to transform places, to tackle serious issues such as income inequality and climate change is severely over-estimated, and brings into question the future of the current economic development mantra, inclusive growth.

Despite these broad economic and political uncertainties, places continue to evolve. In the absence of public or private funding there is a greater emphasis on communities to self-organise, through ordinary and neighbourhood placemaking. The stories of how people in places support the arts, the local heritage, the vulnerable, the young and the old can be an inspirational example of creativity and compassion. Nevertheless, the organisers of food banks, free after-school clubs, community litter-picks, and all the other people who attend neighbourhood gardens, produce local festivals and events, are under-resourced, under-supported, and under-valued.

In this context, we want to understand more about placemaking as a participatory and inclusive practice, which connects individuals into networks of place-based action and results in the context of austerity, devolution, and local responsibility. We are also interested in moving beyond the silos of academics disciplines or professional interventions, to consider the connection between business, community and policy.

We suggest papers might address the following themes:

  • Collective practices of solidarity in an era of austerity
  • Gender and placemaking
  • Creativity and placemaking, as a tool of engagement and transforming place identity
  • Landscape and placemaking
  • Case studies exploring the impact of inclusive placemaking
  • Civic and community-led initiatives
  • The personal motivations, vulnerabilities and achievements of placemakers
  • The practicalities involved in delivering and overcoming barriers to effective placemaking
  • Arts and placemaking
  • The relationship between tourism and placemaking
  • Inclusive models of place management and governance
  • Case studies examining community empowerment at a grassroots level
  • Placemaking for degrowth
  • The communication of place-based narratives in placemaking and place
  • marketing/branding
  • The role and value of small-scale events and festivals
  • Business as actors in local communities
  • Conceptual and ontological issues of placemaking
  • Placemaking and the law
  • The role of digital and social media in placemaking

Deadline for abstracts by 5pm, Wednesday 31st May, 2017

Please submit 500-1000 word abstracts to:  Gareth Roberts

CALL FOR PAPERS: The challenge for academics at Creativity World Forum 2017

On 1-2 Nov 2017 Creativity World Forum comes to the Danish shores for the first time. This is the largest event on creativity during Aarhus’ year as European Capital of Culture. The forum will combine academics, creatives and policy alike and integrate the academic session in a cornucopia of:

15+ high profile speakers
30+ creative breakout sessions
2000+ great minds

Globally, more people are city-dwellers than not. The move toward urban areas is only gathering speed: With Western countries leading the way, projections sway between 64 and 70 per cent of the world population that will live in cities by 2050. These are not just dry numbers: People are excited about city opportunities and choose the city as their place to live, work and play.

Aarhus is one of the oldest Danish cities, now labeled a city on the rise – building on cutting edge urban planning, new smart public spaces, and a growing ecosystem for creative citizen engagement and urban reflection. Cultural creative institutions, neighborhoods and incubators are shaping spaces for us to shape our lives. Yet our cities are dominated by industrial heritage, on the level of decision-making structures, build environment and public spaces as well as funding and spending priorities. This call asks how we can ensure that the changes currently being made to this “city heritage” enables the city of opportunities so much needed for us – and generations to come?

For example:

  • Can regeneration through building development and real estate investment, new public infrastructures building a city of opportunities? If so, how?
  • Or how about the everso popular incitement for creative participation through temporary project funding or ppp’s (private-public-partnerships)? Does that leverage opportunities for the future?

Creativity World Forum asks how to make urban creativity work and sustain: How to transform city heritage into a city of opportunities?

We highlight this against a backdrop where many cities are re-scoping towards a creative city, whilst dealing with inherited structures and population increase. The city heritage encompasses much of our world, in both digital and physical infrastructure, institutional configurations, public financing legacy, information flows and decision-making structures. That is not an easy balance.
The challenge is how to create a future of creative opportunities in our cities? What happens with the inherited structures? Do we regenerate? Or is it wiser to start afresh?

If you are researching in that direction, we would love to hear from you. We welcome all formats, innovative and traditional.

The Creativity World Forum Call for Papers, hosted by Aarhus University, invites academic contributions—critical reflections, case-studies, solutions and answers – to the question of how to use creativity to develop cities on the rise and address a changed global context for urban livability?

We invite abstracts of 100-500 words for long and short papers. You will need the following: focus and theme, description, keywords, and short biographical information

We welcome submission of abstracts until 20 March 2017 12 noon CET.

Further information here…

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: Journal of Urbanism, Special issue: Food and Urbanism

The focus of this special issue of the Journal of Urbanism is to explore and extend our knowledge and understanding of the ways that food and urbanism interconnect in diverse urbanism contexts worldwide. As is increasingly clear, food is a critical aspect of urbanism: an insight sharpened by the connected and worsening issues of inequality and climate change we face globally. The complex roles food plays are now the object of research in a number of disciplines, as well as in cross-disciplinary work, in urban design, planning, architecture, geography, sociology, anthropology, urban history, gastronomy, political economy and more. For this special issue, we call for papers that explore, generally through a primary research focus, the ways that food influences placemaking and can help or hinder sustainable urbanism outcomes. The aim is to add to the body of knowledge about food and urbanism with a view to advancing both conceptual and theoretical frameworks and showcasing specific applied research findings. We welcome papers concentrating on (but not limited to) a range of urbanism scales that might extend from the domestic to the region, a diversity of food centred research sites, and in relation to any aspect or aspects of the food system from production, through distribution, exchange, consumption, and ‘waste’.

While we do not wish to constrain the breadth of papers that may be submitted, examples of possible topics include:

  • The urbanism of food in the domestic sphere – including kitchens, dining rooms, and gardens
  • Foodscapes within ‘traditional’ urban spaces including markets, shops, cafes, restaurants etc
  • The relationship to food and urbanism to evolving experiences of public space
  • Sustainable urban design and food at any stage along the food chain from production to retailing, consumption and ‘waste’
  • Food production and distribution landscapes – including urban, peri-urban and regional contexts
  • Food and urbanism in suburbia, post suburbia and megalopolis
  • Gender and sustainable urbanism in relation to food
  • The urbanism of urban agriculture including ‘transect’ and other design-led approaches
  • Urbanism and urban food design and planning policy

The papers will be subject to a double blind peer review process, and the successful submissions will be included in the Journal of Urbanism special issue.

More details are available from the guest editor below.

Guide for authors
To submit your paper, please click on the following link: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rjou. Once you log in, on the “Details and comments” page, check “yes” under “Is the manuscript a candidate for a special issue?” In the box, enter “Food and Urbanism” as the special issue title.

Deadline for final paper submission: September 1, 2017