Tourism, Mobility and Regional Development

By Dieter Muller & Jarkko Saarinen (organizer Jonas Larsen)

Tourism has become an important industrial sector in the Nordic countries with significant impact on employment, regional development and GDP. Not least new mobility patterns in western societies have contributed to the change. Achieving this has also meant major efforts in creating attractive touristic spaces, a change that not always turned out to be successful. At the same time tourism alters places and the wider economic, cultural and environmental elements. However, these wider changes have not always been at the center of geographical research in tourism. Instead focus on the tourism industry and tourists has gained a major attention leaving questions regarding regional development often aside.

This session aims at revisiting tourism from a regional development perspective and asks how new mobility patterns influence communities and environments in Nordic, but also other regions of the world. An ambition of the session is thus to bridge the divide between tourism geographies and other sub-fields of the discipline like economic and rural geographies. Papers addressing the following topics and related questions from a theoretical and empirical perspective are welcomed to the session:

• Tourism impacts
• Tourism and regional development
• Destination development and planning
• Tourism and community change
• Tourism and the environment
• Different forms of mobility and tourism development
• Sustainable tourism
• Rural tourism

Directors

• Jonas Larsen

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Understanding mobile individuals through location-based experience data and mapping

By Kaisa Schmidt-Thomé

This session invites papers tracing location-based experience of citizens utilizing their living environment in various ways. Papers could be based on both empirical and theoretical work, including GIS-applications and mobility studies, but could also include new conceptualizations of mobile experience, everyday urbanity and localized place experience. Contributions linking such work with urban and regional planning would also be of high interest.

 

Directors

• Kaisa Schmidt-Thomé

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Human Remains: the place of the human in a post-human world

By Paul Harrison & John Wylie

This session asks: what remains of the human after successive waves of anti- and post-humanist thinking? What has been lost and what, if anything, is worth saving? Is it possible or indeed desirable to offer a defence of the human? Or has the critique not gone far enough, the figure of the modern human subject being irreconcilably bound to mechanisms of domination and the politics of exclusion?

In human geography in particular, beyond well-established debates on Marxism and humanism, structure and agency, the past decade has witnessed the establishment of strong research agendas and conceptual claims concerning avowedly non-human and post-human geographies. And more pragmatically we have seen calls for geography to understand and position itself once again as a unified environmental science discipline. 

More widely, from Freud's suspicions and Marx's materialism at the start of the twentieth century, to Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of the Enlightenment, Foucault's and Barthes' death of the author, and onto the emergence of Actor-Network Theory, Non-Representational Theories and a renewed Vitalism at the centuries' end, not to mention the strong anti-humanisms of Speculative Realism, the figure of the human has been subject to de-centring and displacement, dethroning and flattening; its outline fading; its gestures magnetised and its consciousness little more than a synaptic symptom.

Perhaps now it is time to move on, to find different ways of framing and thinking about (and organising and cultivating) subjectivity, sociality, politics and responsibility? This session invites paper which reflect on the fate, figure and place of the human in the contemporary Humanities, Social Sciences and Human Geography, on topics such as, but not limited to:

• The subject and power
• Agency and creativity
• Alterity, ethics and care
• Human rights
• Affective and emotional geographies
• Anomie and alienation
• Land and life
• Geographies/biographies
• Testimony and mourning
• Loss, erasure, traces

 

Directors

• Paul Harrison, Durham University
• john wylie, University of Exeter, UK

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Transnational living

By Kristine Juul

Transnational migrants are those that, in the simplest formula, "live lives across borders". Transnationalism is not new but the scale is increasing as individuals and communities find themselves with stakes in spatially separated but interconnected worlds, they seek to uphold simultaneously. Clearly not all migrants live transnational lives, and transnational living may have many different shapes and appearances. They may be characterised by so-called 'transnational career portefolios' where migrants may have multiple occupations spread over more than one country (industrial worker, street trader, agriculturalist).  Transnational stakes may emerge as economic and social obligations spread over several countries, either towards the immediate kin left behind or in terms of continuous involvement in the political or social development in the country of origin. It may also involve more abstract obligations or global loyalties such as the care that children of immigrants may feel for their home community or for a particular community of faith (see Lewitt 2007).

Such involvement with transnational global communities reflect the multiple sources of identity and social citizenship. However, receiving countries increasingly expect of their new citizens that they blend in with the majority population.  Invisibility often becomes a necessary condition for successful integration into the receiving society. For some groups celebrations of cultural difference is therefore kept outside the realms of the society of the majority. Furthermore, migrants increasingly are moving to places where they have not traditionally settled, i.e. to small towns, suburbs or rural areas. Moving to areas that previously did not experience high levels of diversity may represent new challenges for migrants as well as demands for other types of  transnational exchanges. Finally new countries add to the traditional sending countries as a result of the recent EU enlargement. These citizens enter the European labour market as free movers not as immigrants and are likely to create new forms of temporary circular migration and hence new forms of transnational relations.

In the session we would like to invite papers that investigate the connections that migrants sustain with their sending communities and how these ties influence migrants positions in their home and host countries. We particularly welcome papers that investigate the new forms of transnational living that have arisen as a consequence of either the tightening of immigrant regulation and/or on the forms of transnational living emerging among the 'new' migrant communities.

 

Directors

• Kristine Juul, MOSPUS, ENSPAC, RUC

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

ANT & Tourism practices

By Edward Huijbens

This session aims to explore ANT and tourism practices, in particular the geographying role of material culture of tourism like art objects, artefacts, handicrafts, the built environment, technology, etc. How has this geographying agency of tourism material practices been conceptualised in tourism studies? How does it, for example, appear in place promotion and popular representation at, for and of tourism destinations? Hence one focus is on how this particular geographication hinges on certain images. How have these emerged and changed and how are they reflected through the material and artistic matter(s) manifesting them? But geographical representation is only one ingredient in geographying matter(s). Equally important is the geographying agency of matter itself. How does the Earth itself in all its material majesty enable or prohibit new developments in the tourist industry and create substance for various innovations and destination transformation at the behest of the tourists and those catering for them?

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) provides a set of tools to tackle the questions above among others and is gaining ground in tourism studies. Emerging from a relational ontology, it promises a nuanced approach to the heterogeneous practices of tourism although its usefulness remains contested.

We invite papers dealing with issues set out above, possibly pertaining to:

• Relational ontology generally and ANT specifically as deployed in tourism studies
• The material component of tourism imaginationings
• How tourists represent their travel through engagements with the material
• How destinations develop through an engagement with the material
• The tourism material practices frame innovation activity at destinations

 

Directors

• Edward Huijbens, Icelandic Tourism Research Centre

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

The power/knowledge nexus in environmental policy and management

By Olivier Ejderyan, Tim Richardson & Matthew Cashmore

The nature and significance of the dynamics between power, knowledge and the environment have been highlighted by a number of social science scholars. Early work, which focused on the social constructedness of the environment, played an important role in underlining how power asymmetries and normativity affected environmental policy. In particular, the role of scientific knowledge in constructing the environment, plus the ethical aspects of this, have been extensively investigated. Contemporary research on global environmental issues (notably, climate change and GMOs) has demonstrated that political constructions of the environment are invariably polyvalent with respect to knowledge; no longer is scientific knowledge automatically considered to have primacy. A broader and more complex understanding of the power/knowledge nexus has thus become central to scholarly work on environmental policy and management.

One result of controversies over various environmental issues is the framing of many environmental problems as 'global' issues. Thus the way countries, communities or individuals manage their 'local' environment has become a key point in the normative definition of these actors. Compliance with environmental norms becomes a discriminatory factor for securing membership in regional organisations such as the EU, or in harnessing international development funding. The environment can thus be used for advancing other political agendas, such as institutional/governance reforms.

This session seeks to explore, both empirically and conceptually, the nexus between power and knowledge in environmental policy and management. It will highlight the importance of an analytic focus on power/knowledge dynamics in order to deconstruct environmental debates at different scales and in different contexts of environmental policy making and management. As such, it will explore: How do actors engage in environmental debates? What resources do they mobilise? And what are the outcomes of these debates for different actors?

 

Directors

• Matthew Cashmore, University of East Anglia
• Olivier Ejderyan, Geography Unit, University of Fribourg
• Tim Richardson, Aalborg University

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Peri-urban development: planning practices in hybrid landscapes

By Matthias Qviström

The character of peri-urban landscapes does not fit easily within any of the conventional black boxes used within spatial planning. With values, potentials and conflicts not solely related to either rural or urban planning they run the risk of being disregarded. Nevertheless, peri-urbanization is a phenomenon of increasing importance within the Nordic countries. Hence, there is a need for detailed accounts of its development, its complex character and not the least the role of planning in its constitution in order to better understand how to cope with peri-urban landscapes in the near future.

Whereas hybrid landscapes at the urban fringe were usually regarded as a problem within 20^th century planning, a shift in the debate has led to the recognition of some of the values of such landscapes, e.g. within the discourse on multi-functionality. This has nurtured new planning strategies, which need to be critically examined in order to further develop peri-urban planning.

In this session, research on planning practices dealing with peri-urban (or hybrid) landscapes is welcome, as well as studies of the role of planning for peri-urban development and the creation of hybrid landscapes. Rich stories illustrating the interplay between planning, land-use changes and landscape ideals are of particular interest.

Papers presenting case studies of peri-urban landscapes and planning in the Nordic countries are especially welcome. However, the research needs to be set in a wider theoretical context. Today, the reach of the majority of peri-urban studies is limited by an implicit national perspective, often bounded by national planning legislation as a taken for granted research frame. Papers in this session need to overcome this barrier, either through an explicit theoretical focus or with international comparisons. 

 

Directors

• Mattias Qviström, Swedish Univ of Agricultural Sciences

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Spatial explorations: creative practice, performance and politics

By David Pinder

This session is concerned with the creative practices through which spaces and places are explored, documented, represented, written, performed, contested and struggled over. It focuses on different strategies and tools used by cultural practitioners, artists, activists, geographers and others, including through collaborations and collective practices, and addresses their politics as well as their poetics. Papers may involve discussion of practices of writing, cartography, performance, film, new media, photography, theatre, tours and the like that engage critically with spaces and their contested politics. They may also include attempts to embody in themselves innovative and experimental methods and ways of knowing and intervening in spaces.

Directors

• David Pinder, Queen Mary University of London, School of Geography

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Material politics

By Lucila Newell (organizer Roskilde University)

This session aims at exploring how paying attention to the materiality of practices might challenge the ways we understand politics and democracy. Recent efforts in Geography to link everyday material practices and technologies, which involve different relations between humans and non-humans, with more normative dimensions of politics have started to refigure politics as the 'work of constitution or assemblage in which things force thought, association and attachment' (Braun and Whatmore 2010b: xxix). Papers which make connections between materiality, politics and democracy, especially those who work through empirical material, are welcome.

Directors

• Lucila Newell, Open University

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Looking beyond mainstream economic theory

By Brita Hermelin & Kristina Westermark

The article in Progress in Human Geography by Nigel Thrift and Chris Olds from 1996 and with the title “Refiguring the economic in economic geography” was an important and early contribution to the development of new angels, outside the framework of mainstream economic theory, for studies in economic geography. This article is cited in more than 150 published papers.

Since the mid 1990s, and when the article by Thrift and Olds was published, discussions about the status of economic geography and the theoretical perspectives of this research field have continued and involved many authors. These discussions have frequently been pursued in the context of different theoretical turns in human geography; cultural turn, institutional turn, relational turn, policy turn and postmodern turn. Such approaches and frameworks for economic geography relate to a wide array of theories developed in different disciplinary contexts. The broadening of perspectives in economic geography is also relating to a broadening of the field for empirical studies and the traditional boundaries for what is economic geography are dissolving.

To this session we invite papers in economic geography (widely understood) and which are related to different ideas and discussions in the wide and heterogeneous array of theories outside mainstream economic theory. The perspectives we have in mind as important frameworks for this session frequently stress networks, relations, interactions, representations, culture, power and dependencies. The empirical themes may be about production, consumption, transport, entrepreneurship, firms and organisations, sectors and networks, knowledge, work (paid and un-paid), labour, urban and regional and global economic development, and many more. We invite papers of different types; reviews, conceptual papers, empirical studies, etc.

Directors

• Brita Hermelin, Stockholm University
• kristina Westermark

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Zooming in on European spatial perspectives in the Baltic Sea Region

By ESPON (Antti Roose & Niels Boje Groth)  

Special session for young scholars (doctoral students and post-docs)

The NORBA project (www.rha.is/norba) will host a special session examining the results and findings of ESPON 2013 programme (www.espon.eu) in the Baltic Sea Region, in particular exploring the city regions, rural change and demography in the framework of European, regional and national strategic planning and territorial development policy. The session features the key findings of ESPON 2013 projects and will highlight the Nordic and Baltic regional dimension. The analysis places the Nordic region and Nordic-Baltic countries in a European perspective and zooms in on the state-of-the art of regional studies and planning promoted by ESPON. The session will also nourish a discussion on research-policy relationships and aims to explore how spatial planning has been informed by the concepts of space and place and how these concepts have been articulated, presented and visualised through the production of contemporary plans.

The NORBA project will provide up to 10 bursaries for young fellows and PhD students for covering part of the costs (registration, travel and accommodation) in order to facilitate their participation in the NGM conference and networking amongst peers.

Application deadline for bursaries is the same as the abstract submission deadline. In order to be eligible for the bursary, an applicant must be either registered as a PhD student or working as a post-doc researcher at a Nordic or Baltic university or research institute. An applicant must submit an abstract to the NGM04 ESPON session proposing a topic related to strategic planning or territorial development policy. A panel consisting of members of the peer reviewers and the NORBA project will select bursary recipients based on the quality of the abstract.

 

Directors

• Niels Groth, University of Copenhagen
• Antti Roose, University of Tartu

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Moving between Places

By Winfried Ellingsen

Responding to the increasing connectivity of places, mobility has become an important concept in geography that seeks to better understand the character of life in the 21^st century. Instead of separating place, in its territorial sedentaristic meaning, and mobility we propose that in many ways, places and mobilities are intertwined and may even be regarded as becoming together. It seems impossible to imagine place, home, sociality and culture without the mobilities of people, goods and information. The growing complexity that emerges out of these various enactments has significance for how we conceptualise place and home, as more and more people have translocal and transnational attachments. Home can be related to several physical locations, as obvious from the notion of ‘second home’. Mobilities seem to transgress physical and mental boundaries of urban/rural, centre/periphery, providing for new hybrid spaces of living.

In this session we invite papers that enhance the field of mobility research theoretically, methodologically and empirically. Papers related to 'second home' research, as well as topics related to migration are welcomed as they could provide for fruitful juxtapositions.

Directors

• Winfried Ellingsen

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Sustainable spaces

By Søren Kerndrup

Environment, place and space are key themes in critical geography and its importance has been growing challenged by the increasing recognition of the human factors as an important trigger of the climate change.

Environment, place and space is key themes, where critical geography had made important contributions in order to understanding theoretical and practical integration and tensions between space and environment (Harvey, 2009), global and local actions and consequences (Gibbs).

The focus has primarily been on understanding the dynamics of social and ecological systems, systems of places and spaces, local and global actions and the importance of economic, social and cultural development and practice.

The aim of this strand is to contribute to a theoretical and practical development of the critical geography and its key themes by focusing of these from the perspective of sustainability spaces. The concepts of sustainability with its emphases on social and ecological systems, change and development, and critical concepts spaces is seen as an important way to frame the integrative aspects of environment and space, and understand the importance of the concepts place and space in forming a more sustainable development.

History of environment and sustainability has shown the importance of places and spaces in transition of activities and practices and the importance of social entrepreneurs, communities and localities in forming niches which made it possible to experiment with innovative ways of  produce,  consume, live and organising. A trend which is also becoming more and more visible up till and after the COP 15 in Copenhagen, where the illusion of a global based initiative break down.

We are now seeing actors and stakeholders organised in between places and localities are taking the lead in transforming the practice of production, consumption and living and want to drawn on this rich empirical and theoretical practice.  

We therefore call for papers which focus on or reflect on this new transformative trend in activities of production, consumption and living.  They papers is recommended in relation to following issues and themes but related papers are also welcome.

• Transformation to sustainable places and spaces by development of activities of production industrial ecologies, sustainable business, sectors, networks and cluster activities.
• Transformation to sustainable places by creating new practice of consumption and living in localities, towns or cities
• Transforming to sustainable places by development of new forms of planning and governance
• Transforming to sustainable places by development of social practice, grassroots and social movement
• Theoretical and conceptual papers on theories of transformation strategies and processes from a critical geographic perspectives
• Reflections on research methodologies and methods  in sustainable spaces
• Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on sustainable spaces 

 

 

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Conceptualising Power and Space in Planning Theory and Practice

By Anne Jensen, Henrik Gutzon Larsen & Tim Richardson

Relationships between space and power receive increasing attention within the field of geography, targeting power dimensions of space and spatiality at different scales. Meanwhile, although planning theory has concentrated quite extensively on questions of power, and also on questions of space, there is less work that has brought these threads together into a focus on the nature of power/space relations in planning. In this session we aim to establish an open dialogue on conceptualisations of power and space in planning theory and practice in and across the fields of planning and geography.

This can for example involve questions concerning the production and transformation of borders and territories, the constitution and meaning of place, perceptions and representations of spaces and mobilities, and the significance of historicity and context in theory and empirical analyses. Further, a focus on space and power in the shaping and planning of society may entail normative questions relating to issues such as sustainability, social (in)equality and justice.

 

Directors

• Anne Jensen, Aarhus University
• Henrik Larsen, Aalborg University
• Tim Richardson, Aalborg University

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Social justice and the city - way forward?

By Anders Trumberg, Marco Eiermann, Ingar Brattbakk & Heidi Bergsli 

We would like to draw attention to the present status and future prospects for 
perspectives on social justice and the city. Do our concepts and perspectives 'keep 
track' with urban conditions, or do we need to find new ways in which we approach topics 
of uneven geographical development in and between cities? Do we need to move the 
theoretical ground to include more substantial cross-disciplinary approaches? Is there a 
particular comparative scope by which we can develop our conceptual frameworks (i.e. by 
overcoming theoretical divides between urban studies in the global North and South, 
between urban and rural areas)

We invite empirical, theoretical and methodological papers focusing on processes of 
social sustainability, socioeconomic and ethnic segregation and integration, 
gentrification, shrinking cities, the right to the city etc., that aim to reduce gaps 
between political and economic realities and the ways we conceptualize our critique and 
concerns with questions of social and spatial justice in the broad sense.

Directors

• Heidi Bergsli, oslo university college
• Ingar Brattbakk, Research Fellow / PhD student, University of Oslo
• Marco Eimermann, Örebro University
• Anders Trumberg, Örebro university, Centre for urban and regional reaserch (CURES),Research School Urban Studies.

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

A Geographical Twist of Doing Gender-theory

By Gunnel Forsberg & Susanne Stenbacka

It is important to develop a spatial dimension to gender theory. There is more to gender than to define it as a way of becoming. There is also practice and strategies developed within the existing spatial context, and transforming while the context is changing. Gendered relations prevail by our daily lives in local places. Both space and body are constructed and shaped out of what is materially possible. By analysing the production, construction and transformation  of male and female, and its implications for every-day lives in rural environments, the place- specific masculinities and femininities and their certain characteristics and expressions can be found. The conclusion is that in order to understand the spatial dimension of gender relations and contracts we must develop a perspective including structure and actors, materiality and practice and also involving women’s and men’s biographies. In empirical research the interrelation between gender, space and biographies (time) becomes evident; such as adjusting to a place specific gender contract, transnational experiences, bodily experiences, and various kinds of displacement. 

To this session, we invite researchers interested in the development of gender theory from a geographical angle.

 

Directors

• Gunnel Forsberg, Professor
• Susanne Stenbacka, Uppsala University

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Simulating geographical knowledge of past landscapes

By George Induszewski

The kernel is how geographers, archaeologists and historians can work together to reconstruct the geographical knowledge in a comtemporary format.

Directors

• George Indruszewski, ENSPAC

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Management and Planning of Water Resources

By Paul Thorn, Eva Bøgh & Niels Schrøder

We propose holding a session that includes papers in the area of management and planning aspects of our water resources. The subject area is meant to be broad in order to encourage papers from a wide range of research topics within the field. Papers dealing with the following topics are particularly encouraged to be submitted:

• Water management with respect to fulfilment of the EU Water Framework Directive;
• Impact of climate change on the quantity and quality of our water resources;
• Understanding of groundwater - surface water interaction;
• Protection of groundwater and surface water resources;
• Understanding of evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge;
• Water management in energy production; and
• Impact of water use on ecosystems.

Presentation of studies from not just the Nordic countries, but from all over the world are welcome at this session.

Directors

• Eva Bøgh
• niels schrøder, ENSPAC - RUC
• Paul Thorn, Roskilde Universitet

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Geography and Earth System Science

By Eva Bøgh

Earth system science is the study of the Earth as a single, integrated physical and social system.  Humans have deeply affected the landscape and changed the driving force behind the basic operation of the Earth system. No study of the soil, atmosphere, geomorphology and ecosystems of any place on Earth can be assumed to be independent of the role of humans, and it has become increasingly important to integrate human and natural sciences to reach a sustainable regional and global development of landscapes. The current session highlights the role of geographers and other socio-environmental researchers to study human-environmental interactions and its consequences for a sustainable development of regions and Earth System processes.

 

Directors

• Eva Bøgh

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Geography and Education

By Lene Møller Madsen, Lena Molin, Per Jarle Sætre & Sirpa Tani

Research on geography and educational issues have increased and strengthened during the recent years. We need research-based knowledge of how to create inspiring learning environments.  

In this session we want to engage geographers researching in the field of how to learn geography at all levels of the educational system: primary and secondary school, college and university. Further we open up for research on different learning environments, such as traditional in-house teaching, informal learning, and public displays.

This session is the third relating to Geography and Education at NGM. By establishing a session on geography and education we want to start a tradition of discussing educational issues at the Nordic geographers meetings in the years to come.

Themes for the presentations for our session (some examples):

 

• research on issues on geography teaching, studying and learning
• studies of teaching methods and materials
• relations of academic and school geographies
• values in geography education (e.g. education for sustainable development, environmental education, multicultural/intercultural education, citizenship education, global education, etc.)

 

Directors

• Lene Madsen, Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen
• Lena Molin
• Per Jarle Sætre
• Sirpa Tani, University of Helsinki

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Critical Geography and the Neoliberal University

By Lawrence Berg

This panel will examine aspects of the complex and often contradictory relationships between critical geography and the rise of the neoliberal university in Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA.  More specifically, the session is designed to tease out the ways that critical geographers have both participated in and contested the corporatization, privatization and neoliberalisation of university life.

Panelists:
Luiza Bialasiewicz, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota, USA
Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Roskilde University, Denmark
Edward Huijbens, University of Akureyri, Iceland
Anders Lund Hansen, Lund University, Sweden
Claudio Minca, University of Wageningen, The Netherlands

Directors

• Lawrence Berg, University of British Columbia

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Battles of mobilities – utopias for a different future

By Malene Freudendal-Pedersen & Jonas Larsen 

Planning cities with the goal of economic growth as the primary objective has been the way forward for cities during the last century. Because of the firmly seated discourse that more mobility gives more growth, city planning has been centred on creating infrastructural systems, dominated by an autologic. The private car has been seen as the starting point for growth, alongside the logistic networks). Today, we see cities where the consequences of these planning strategies are visible and showing. Especially larger cities are articulating the unintended consequences of mobility and their infrastructural systems. Sudjic (2007) conveys this in the book The Endless City saying that: "...it may well be that cities are more often the product of unintended consequences than of anything else" (35). Between 25-50 % of city space are used to facilitate automobility thus automobility has a strong grip on everyday life, and constitutes a great challenge for cities. It occupies a large amount of space, space that could be used for social and cultural activities. Cars take up a lot of space, space that is taken from other forms of social life. Just a small amount of these spaces could widely expand the free space of lived everyday lives in the city. Thus the question mobility can be a discussion of equity and democracy in the city. Questioning the right and access to city space can for instance bee seen through the international monthly event called Critical Mass where cyclists take over the streets stating 'we are not blocking traffic, we are traffic'.

Mobility research has evolved during the last decade to understand and grasp these battles and new ways of understanding the city. New mobile social media, innovative social networks and arts are questioning movement and connectivity in new ways. Thus new cultures of mobility are emerging, as people challenges environmental issues, this demands all kinds of different solutions, new thinking, experimentation and living differently.

The session will among others explore but are not limited to:

 

• Mobility conflicts and power struggles
• The right to the city
• Ambivalences of mobile everyday life
• Sustainable mobility

 

 

Directors

• Malene Freudendahl-Pedersen, Associate Professor ENSPAC
• Jonas Larsen

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Christiania: Forty years of social critique

Organizers: Anders Lund Hansen & Henrik Gutzon Larsen (This is as a panel)

Chair: Henrik Gutzon Larsen

Discussant: Peter Skriver

 

Panelists:

• Håkan Törn
• René Karpantschof
• Signe Sophie Bøggild
• Helen Jarvis
• Anders Lund Hansen
• Cathrin Wasshede

Directors

• Anders Hansen, Lund University
• Henrik Larsen, Aalborg University

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Practices, performances and politics of place making

Directors

• David Pinder, Queen Mary University of London, School of Geography

Open Submissions

Peer Reviewed