[URBANTH-L]CFP: Urban Justice and Sustainability (Vancouver, BC)

[Angela Jancius]

Conference Call for "Urban Justice and Sustainability"

When: August 22 - 25, 2007

Schedules:
Wednesday, Aug 22: Registration and evening plenary session
Thursday, Aug 23: Morning plenary session and afternoon sessions
Friday, Aug 24: Morning plenary session and afternoon sessions
Saturday, Aug 25: Urban tours in the morning

Where: The University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, British 
Columbia, Canada

Organized by: Brian Elliott, Department of Sociology, UBC

Hosted by: The University of British Columbia and International Sociological 
Association Research Committee on Urban & Regional Development (ISA-RC21)

Rationale:
This conference focuses on two quests: one for social justice, the other for 
sustainability. The first encompasses a range of traditional social science 
issues like poverty, homelessness, segregation and discrimination, issues 
that have been given renewed urgency by processes of urban and regional 
development during the recent phase of globalization. Latterly, the search 
for sustainability - social and economic as well as ecological - has been 
given new impetus by the debate about global climate change and also the 
occurrence of some remarkable natural phenomena - hurricanes, massive fires, 
and floods, and a devastating tsunami. Both quests have radical 
implications: each calls into question the viability of current systems of 
production and consumption.

At this meeting we want to bring together sociologist, social geographers, 
political scientists, economists, planners, architects and others to answer 
questions like "How can the growing inequalities and injustices of much 
urban and regional development today be mitigated and reversed?" "What 
theories and what policies foster the promotion of social and economic 
justice?" "Where do we find projects, communities, regions or cities that 
illustrate that". At the same time we want to consider "In what ways can 
sustainability best be promoted?" "Can we develop theories and practices 
that simultaneously build sustainability and justice at the urban, regional 
and global levels?"

Themes:
Conference themes include followings but are not limited to them. More 
related themes are welcome. Please contact with Brian Elliott and Fernando 
Diaz Orueta.

The Aboriginal City. Native People and Urbanization in Settler Societies

Youth, Citizenship and Sustainability

Urban Redevelopment and the New Urban Clearances

Spatial/Environmental Justice

Mega Projects and Sustainability

Housing and Sustainability

Urban Sustainable Movements

Sustainability and Governance

Culture of Consumption and Sustainability

Urbanization and Sustainable Development on the Asia-Pacific Rim


Session proposals: Send your session proposal with the title and its short 
description (within 150 words) to

            Brian Elliott (Brian.Elliott at ubc.ca) and
            Fernando Diaz Orueta (Fernando.Diaz at ua.es) by

            January 31, 2007

Please note that session organizers can't present their papers in their own 
sessions.

Individual papers: All sessions will be announced on the RC21 web page in 
the early February. Please send the title and abstract (within 100 words) of 
your proposed paper to individual session organizers after that by

            April 30, 2007

The program will be completed by the middle of May, 2007

About UBC

The University of British Columbia (UBC) is one of Canada's largest and most 
respected universities. With some 35,000 undergraduates, 8,000 graduate 
students, more than 4,000 faculty, a revenue well in excess of one billion 
dollars a year and an impressive record of research and innovation it is not 
surprising that it is attracting excellent students and faculty from around 
the world. Particularly in the last decade, it has earned an international 
reputation as a major research institution.

Its main campus enjoys a stunningly beautiful site on Point Grey. Visit the 
Museum of Anthropology and walk out to look over the Straight of Georgia to 
Vancouver Island and across to the North Shore. You will find yourself 
looking at the entrance to the 30 km fiord-like Howe Sound with its islands 
and snow-capped mountains and the twisting road that leads to Whistler and 
North America's best ski-ing. In the 1920s the Provincial Government set 
aside 3,000 acres as 'The Endowment Lands' to provide both a new site for 
the university, which had little room for expansion in its original downtown 
location, and a resource from which it could derive development revenue. 
Although some 1,800 of those original acres were turned into Provincial 
park, the university still has sufficient land not only for the expansion of 
its own facilities but for the creation of a whole 'University Town'. It 
comes as a surprise to most visitors (and students) to realize that UBC is 
not part of the City of Vancouver, but is actually administered by the 
Provincial government in Victoria. In practice, it has come to act more and 
more like an independent municipality, which means assuming responsibility 
for urban planning. It is this, in part, that led in 1997 to a very 
self-conscious adoption of 'sustainability' as a development principle - 
that, and the long history of academic work that related to British Columbia's 
abundant, but declining natural resources in fish, forests and minerals. And 
that history of resource dependency helps explain why Vancouver was the 
birthplace of Greenpeace, among many other environmental organizations.

So, UBC is a particularly appropriate place in which to hold a conference on 
sustainability. (Visit the main website - ubc.ca - and follow the links to 
University Town and to Sustainability to find out more).

About Vancouver

The City of Vancouver has less than 600,000 inhabitants, but the greater 
Vancouver area has nearly 2,000,000 people. Along with other municipalities, 
Vancouver sends representatives to a body known as the Greater Vancouver 
Regional District (GVRD) which has been attempting to implement a 'Livable 
Region' policy with many features aimed at social and economic as well as 
ecological sustainability.

Since its foundation in the late nineteenth century Vancouver has always 
been an ethnically diverse place. There were various First Nations in what 
we now call the Lower Mainland and the early settlers were not just of 
British or French descent but counted Chinese, Japanese, Sikhs, Americans, 
Hawaiians and numerous others among their number. In the last thirty years 
that diversity has only increased and today the city and region hold not 
only very large populations of Chinese and South Asians, but substantial 
numbers from Central and Latin America, from just about every Asian and 
European country, from Iran and many other nations in the so-called Middle 
East, as well as groups from the former Soviet states and from Africa. 
Vancouver, indeed the whole of B.C. benefits enormously from this with an 
amazing array of cultural events and practices, numerous holy-days and the 
most enticing and affordable restaurants imaginable.