Download 1st Cardiff International Conference on Sustainable Place

CALL FOR PAPERS
CARDIFF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE PLACE-MAKING
DATE: 29th/30th October 2012
VENUE: Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University
Coping with the adaptive changes necessary as a result of climate change and resource
depletion becomes one of the main challenges facing the world in the second decade of the
21st century. Sustainability science has grown rapidly as an engaging interdisciplinary field in
which to scientifically address these issues. This conference wishes to focus on the
problem of sustainable place- making; that is how integrated thinking can be
developed and applied in different places and spaces so as to adapt systems of
production and consumption and bring about transformative change.
Current structural processes of globalisation, financialisation, economic competitiveness and
technological development are creating constraints and major challenges for sustainability
and social cohesion. Many of these processes have tended to reduce the significance and
diversity of place. Also, in many scientific disciplines place-based thinking and applications
have given way to more generic models of understanding and application. Society faces
emerging and interconnected sustainability challenges linked to financial instability, ’peak
oil’, food security, climate change, drought, loss of biodiversity and other eco-system
services, and demographic changes including migration. At the same time we are
witnessing the growth of potentially transformatory ‘place-based’ initiatives associated within,
for example, the key resources sectors of energy, food, mobilities, health and household
goods and services. Territorial and place-based approaches are also becoming more
important in policy debates and innovation strategies concerning regions such as Europe
and at the city-region levels. The importance of redefining and recognising diversified
territorial assets and new types of social and regional cooperation and collaboration has
been recognised by such bodies as the EU and the OECD in considering economic and
innovation strategies. These concerns now need to embrace questions about the spatial
economy and how this re-links with ecological and socio-cultural and community processes
of evolution and development.
The conference wishes to bring together leading scholars and active researchers around the
theme of sustainable place making, providing a platform for critical debate and progress
about the theoretical/ conceptual and practice and policy implications of adopting placemaking approaches.
Within the themes below, papers are invited which address:
(i)
Areas of theoretical and conceptual progress in understanding the comparative
complexities of place-based adaptive change;
(ii) Methodological advances in understanding and assessing integrated place-based
solutions at different spatial scales;
(iii) The implications for innovations in policy and practice and for adaptive governance
frameworks.
Themes
1)
Sustainable and connected communities
2)
Ecosystems and ecosystem services
3)
Implications of mobilities, flows and migrations for the creation of sustainable places
4)
Re-placing risk governance: alternative ways of governing places
Abstracts proposals for papers or posters should be submitted by 31st July 2012 to:
[email protected]
Abstracts should be up to 250 words and indicate your name, contact email address, your
Institution (if applicable) and which theme you would like to be considered for.
Conference Organising Committee
Terry Marsden
Leanne Cullen-Unsworth
Isabelle Durance
Alex Franklin
Yi Gong
Brian MacGillivray
Abid Mehmood
Themes
1)
Sustainable and Connected Communities
A sustainable community needs to support the quality of life of its existing and future
members. The recent literatures on ‘sustainable place-making’, ‘sustainable communities’
and community-led sustainability initiatives, have put a renewed emphasis upon
problematising space and place as part of progressing real adaptations towards the
integration of ecological, economic and social forms of sustainability. Such works, in turn
raise new sets of questions about the degree and strength of the sustainability dynamic itself
in and through places. For example, how can new forms of connectivity within and between
communities and their broader environments (both physical and social environment) help
sustain the health of the local population? How does the physical environment complement
the distinct social character of a community in creating a sense of a place? How do we foster
‘real’ or ‘strong’ forms of sustainability practice? Why do so many community-led
sustainability initiatives remain fragmented, marginal and disconnected; how can they
become more joined and scaled up such that they add significantly to a denser matrix and
cluster of sustainable place-making? What are the rights, roles and responsibilities of each
set of stakeholders involved
(individually and collectively)? Given the increasingly recognised peculiar nature of real
sustainability practice - in that it is highly embedded in places and community on the one
hand and therefore highly resistant to generic and aggregated progression, either at the
empirical or conceptual levels on the other - these questions challenge theory-building as
well as our empirical analyses. Nevertheless, exploring such questions and issues remains
central to progressing and mainstreaming sustainability practice at the local level, and for
delivering the wider goals of sustainable adaptation.
2)
Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services
Ensuring sustainable environments, in a world where the climate and other conditions are
changing, requires a new understanding of how physical, ecological and social processes
are inter-related.
Services delivered by our ecosystems have globally been undervalued largely through lack
of understanding of the interactions between these processes across different scales.
Understanding their coupled relationship is vital for adaptive systems of management and
governance that can ensure sustainability despite increased pressure on natural resources
stemming from climate change, food security, water scarcity…
This theme is aimed at ecologists, earth scientists, economists and social scientists, and we
aim to explore questions related to
(i)
What combinations of ecosystems and social systems are sustainable? How can these
relationships be strengthened to foster higher resilience?
(ii) What ecosystem services are most under threat, and what are the trade-offs we will
(iii)
(iv)
need to address?
What scales are relevant to the sustainable management of natural resources and
ecosystem functions, and how can findings be translated from one scale to another?
What tools and measures best assess current interactions between societies and their
natural environments, and can also be used for predictive purposes?
3)
Implications of mobilities, flows and migrations for the creation of sustainable
places
Implications of mobilities, flows and migrations for the creation of sustainable places
Sustainability impacts related to ‘place’ are to a large extent determined by the flows that
occur within and between places including flows of people, money, energy, water, soil,
species, natural resources, produce, manufactured goods, waste and vehicles. There is
therefore a need to understand the dynamics of sustainable places, by considering the
relationships within and between places in terms of these flows of resources, human
mobilities and natural migrations. This theme will focus on how mobilities, flows and
migrations impact the sustainability of particular places in terms of: protection of
environmental quality; promotion of social justice and; provision of sustainable livelihoods
and wellbeing. Key streams include: Natural Flows within (and between) ecosystems (e.g.
species migrations, ecosystem services, water, air flows); People Flows (e.g. migrations at
different scales, commuting, tourism); Resource Flows (e.g. international resource transfer,
energy, food and mineral flows); Economic Flows (e.g. international trade deficits,
investment flows, regional economic flows, rural-urban economic flows). We also encourage
submissions related to other areas such as information or knowledge flows, ideas and policy
flows. This theme aims to include different aspects of sustainability science to inform a future
dynamic interdisciplinary flow-based research agenda.
4)
Re-placing risk governance: alternative ways of governing places
Risk remains the dominant logic for governing environmental threats, yet its emphasis on
universality, prediction and control seems to make it ill-suited to deal with the often unruly
features of particular places. Is the logic of risk incompatible with place-based governance,
or can it be tinkered with to better accommodate local knowledge, spatial variation, and
meaningful public participation? Or do we need to look elsewhere for alternative logics of
governing places – e.g. precautionary, or adaptive management – and what sort of
ontologies and institutional designs might they entail?
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Alison Blay-Palmer, Assistant Professor, Wilfred-Laurier University
Arthur Mol, Professor in Environmental Policy, Wageningen University
James Meadowcroft, Professor in Public Policy, Carleton University
Tony Capon, Head of Public Health, University of Canberra
Hilkka Vihenen, Professor of Rural Policy, MTT Agrifood Research Finland