[URBANTH-L] CFP: Revenge and Renewal: Revanchist Urbanism and City Transformation (UK)

[Angela Jancius]

Call for Papers
Revenge and Renewal: Revanchist Urbanism and City Transformation

Newcastle University, UK

10th and 11th August

2006

The aim of this conference is to provide a space for focused discussion and
critical reflection on key emerging transitions in urban society across the
globe. The idea of a revanchist urbanism has begun to filter into analyses
of urban policies and the terms under which social, political and economic
renewal are now being secured.

A politics of revenge, in which urban elites and an everyday urban society
labelled as decent, ordinary and hard-working has sought the use of
increasingly punitive measures to enable security, reduce disorder and sow
the seeds for preconditions seen as essential for local economic
development. It has been argued that a growing intolerance of progressive
politics, the homeless, street poor, minor disorder and unconventional
lifestyles has burgeoned globally. These vengeful actions can be located in
the actions of local states, private households, corporate entities and
their agents, as well as in the architecture and public spaces of the city
in which hostility to difference and engineered conformity now appear as the
essential ingredients of enforced ordinariness. The conference will draw
together researchers and academic commentators to entertain a broad range of
perspectives on the revanchist city.

The organisers welcome abstracts or expressions of interest from
participants across the globe on topics that may include: urban governance
and politics, property markets, private security, segregation, socio-legal
sanctions, policing, vigilantism, gentrification, processes of clearance and
other areas of contention and sites of conflict.

Confirmed key speakers:

Prof. Neil Smith, City University of New York
Dr Rowland Atkinson, University of Tasmania


Please send expressions of interest by email to: Stuart Cameron
(S.J.Cameron at newcastle.ac.uk)