Urbanisation, Infrastructures and Everyday Life
| Dates: | 1 May 2019 - 3 May 2019 |
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| Times: | All day |
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| What is it: | Conferences |
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| Organiser: | School of Environment, Education and Development |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults |
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Keynote speakers:
Prof Em Clara Greed (UWE)
Dr Christoph Luethi (EAWAG)
Prof Nicholas Rose (King's College London)
Dr Farhana Sultana (Syracuse)
Countries undergoing rapid urban transformations experience shifts in various infrastructural systems. However, there are explicit tensions between the apparent need to develop national infrastructures and the possible implications that this may carry for human health, social relations and environmental sustainability. For instance, unequal access to urban infrastructure – from sanitation to communication – can lead to stratified health outcomes. Differing everyday practices associated with competing coexisting infrastructures can result in exclusion and isolation of already marginalised groups. Resource-intensive and polluting modern infrastructures can trigger the degradation and loss of ecosystems and their services.
This conference invites contributions concerned with:
- the design, planning, implementation, maintenance and use of urban infrastructures (including, but not limited to, sanitation, transportation, health care and education);
- the social meanings underpinning infrastructural systems and their processes;
- the wider environmental effects of urban infrastructures; and
- the human well-being outcomes of urban infrastructural transitions (public health in particular).
We are interested in systems approaches and perspectives that place everyday life at the centre and take into account multiple scales (from the human body to the global climate), critical resources and human social systems to understand and address infrastructure challenges. Whilst we are particularly interested in contributions with focus on East Asia, we welcome contributions on other experiences or comparative studies from other regions where they fit with the conference themes.
The conference will explore research, policy and praxis on all aspects of infrastructures, their development and outcomes, including – but not limited to – the following:
- Urban infrastructures and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): e.g., water, sanitation, waste, or related systems across varying spatial scales
- Uses and experiences: everyday practices, individual and group experiences, well-being outcomes
- Design and planning: circulating knowledges, policy mobilities, development paradigms, cultural bias, global/local relationships, politics and power
- Implementation and maintenance: finance, resources, models
- Transdisciplinarity: conceptual frameworks, research design and methodologies
- Perspectives on urban socio-technical relations which exceed, or bring together, individual infrastructural sectors and systems (transportation, water, etc.)
- East Asian and comparative case studies: historic and contemporary accounts
- Activist and community praxis, including decolonising approaches to infrastructural development, urban change, and resource/waste management
- Education and dissemination: strategies, tactics and lessons learned
Timeline
- Deadline for abstract submission: 30 September 2018
- Early bird & speaker registration: 15 November 2018 – 15 January 2019
- Conference: 1-3 May 2019
This conference is generously supported by the University of Manchester’s Hallsworth Conference Fund; Complexity Planning and Urbanism at the Manchester School of Architecture; the Confucius Institute at the University of Manchester; the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester; and Beijing Normal University.
It is held under the auspices of Manchester Urban Institute.
Travel and Contact Information
