Networked regions and cities in times of fragmentation:

Developing smart, sustainable and inclusive places

Sunday 13th Wednesday 16th May 2012:
Delft University Technology, Delft, Netherlands
(Excursion, walking tour and evening drinks reception Sunday 13th May)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Register here

spatial justice and urban/regional development

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Session Organisers:
Vasilis Avdikos (v.avdikos@gmail.com),
Gordon Dabinett (G.E.Dabinett@sheffield.ac.uk)
Thilo Lang (T_Lang@IfL-Leipzig.de)
More recent literature on spatial justice takes collective senses of injustice as a starting point for
research around topics of social justice related to space. Social, environmental, economic and
political injustices always have a temporal and spatial aspect; they happen in and across space in a
particular temporal context. From environmental segregation, to the gerrymandering of electoral
districts and the creation of economic inequalities in different spatial scales, the concept of spatial
justice has gradually become the focus of many studies, especially during the last decade. Further
interest on questions of spatial justice arises in the context of recent civil rights movements such as
the right to the city movement or the 99%-initiatives.
This session seeks to unpack the ways that spatial justice is perceived, produced and documented in
the processes of urban and regional development and, furthermore, how these processes relate
with community action and participation, grassroots initiatives and civil rights movements. Although
the concept of spatial justice has been implemented in the literature of economic development, we
can hardly find studies that deal with the issue of justice/injustice in the fields of regional and local
development in the European Union. One of the main questions that this session puts forward asks
whether new national and EU urban and regional policies (social and cohesion policy, economic
development promotion, territorial policy, sustainability etc.) have secured just processes of spatial
development or rather the opposite. Other questions could deal with concepts of justice/injustice in
urban regeneration practices, related to concepts of polycentricity and multi-level governance,
peripherality and rurality or the relations between the urban and the rural.
Potential presentations from geographers, planners, economists, sociologists should deal with
recent empirical work on questions of spatial justice resp. public senses and articulations of injustice
in relation to space. Papers possibly find their theoretical background in ideas of the Just City
(Fainstein), The Right to the City (Lefebvre), Zombie Neoliberalism (Jamie Peck), Social justice and

the City (David Harvey) or Spatial Justice and the City (Peter Marcuse). We in particular invite new
formats of presentation and discussion.
Anyone interested in participating in the session should register for the conference before
10th February 2012 by visiting www.regionalstudies.org, and follow the link.