UGRG 2010 Conference

Alternative Urbanisms

Thursday 11th - Friday 12th November 2010, University College London, Gower Street - London - WC1E 6BT UK

This year’s UGRG Conference will explore alternative ways of organising, practising and imagining cities. It responds to recent global turbulence and uncertainty in urban capitalist economies, political frameworks and environmental conditions. These urgently demand new ways of challenging existing policies, ideologies and visions, by recognising a broad and complex array of urban geographies, and emphasising the creative and sustainable possibilities of the urban twenty-first century.

Speakers include:

Call for Contributions


We are seeking contributions from a wide range of urban research around a variety of geographical and historical contexts. We hope the informal and supportive forum of the Conference will encourage discussion, debate and learning on these themes.

Guiding topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

- Emergent forms of organizational infrastructures which build new alliances between political actors within and across cities.
- Case studies that challenge or unsettle dominant conceptions and geographical circuits within urban theory.
- New urban analyses of power, civil society and everyday life .
- How the work of artists and cultural practitioners can help develop urban counter-geographies and new engagements with urban space and place.
- Issues of justice and equity in the framing and formulation of urban policies.
- Critical perspectives on historical and present roles for utopianism in urban visions, theory and planning.

Building on the success of previous events, the conference will take the form of keynote presentations, shorter papers, and a poster session by postgraduate students.  Papers are welcomed from researchers (including PhD students) at any stage of their careers, but the poster session is specifically designed for postgraduates, with a prize awarded to the best entry.

If you would like to contribute a Paper or a Poster, please contact:
Andrew Harris: andrew.harris@ucl.ac.uk and Margo Huxley: m.huxley@sheffield.ac.uk

The deadline for 200 word abstracts was Friday 27 August 2010.

Registration form (pdf/word)

Past Conferences

2009

Global Cities Now? Current Perspectives in 'Global Urban Studies'

Thursday 5th - Friday 6th November 2009, Centre for Urban Theory, Swansea University, UK.

The Keynote Speakers were:

Professor Peter Taylor (Loughborough)
Professor Andrew Leyshon (Nottingham)
Professor Wendy Larner (Bristol)
Professor Ian Gordon (LSE)

2008

Urban MultipliCities - Exploring multiple urbanisms and challenging conventional
representations

Thursday 6th - Friday 7th November 2008, Department of Geography, Queen Mary, Univesrity of London, UK.

The Keynote Speakers were:

Dr Mustafa Dikec (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr David Pinder (Queen Mary, University of London)
Professor Gillian Rose (Open University)
Professor Egin Isin (Open University)