TOPIC
The conference presents keynote speeches and invites papers from researchers and practicing professionals with the general aim to improve the knowledge base for urban development and urban policy decisions.
Under the title ‘Cities without Limits', the conference will focus on the challenges for urban policies, planning and design which arises when clear cut separations of city and countryside give way to new hybridised ‘urban landscapes' with increasingly blurred borderlines between cities and between the city and the countryside and the growing impact of new relational geographies at the regional as well as the global level. At the regional level former stable relations between cities and their hinterlands are replaced by the emergence of overlapping labour- and housing markets, leading cities into new divisions of labour and local competition. At the global level economic and strategic relations are changing the life and economy of cities. Urban restructuring has been at the agenda for several years, now facing cities, professionals, politicians and researchers with new questions about the identity of cities and citizens and how to deal with the new relational geographies that are replacing well-known geographies of places.
Five themes have been selected for further investigation. They will be addressed by six distinguished keynote speakers at two plenary sessions, and the themes will form the framework for the parallel track-sessions based upon presentations of papers submitted by the participants. The five themes formed the backbone of the research program ‘Cities without limits' conducted by the Centre for Strategic Urban Research 2004 - 2010.
Submission of papers is invited for presentation within the five track themes:
Thematic tracks:
- Conceptualising cities
- Governance in cities unbound
- Residential liveability in urban regions
- Resilient/Metropolitan landscape
- The city of talent - knowledge economy and urbanity
- Open track. Topics to be selected by the participants
In addition to the five thematic tracks, an open track (# 6) will be at the disposal for international groups of researchers and practising professionals that would like to present findings from international research projects, cost actions or other international co-operations in urban research and urban planning. This track is a special opportunity for international groups and organisations of practitioners and planners to present their work on e.g. best practices and cooperation projects.
The conference will be held in central Copenhagen. Hotels are available at a range of price levels and the metropolitan region of Copenhagen and Malmö offers rich opportunities for the study tours and excursions (mobile workshops) arranged at the end of the conference.
