Global Suburbanisms researchers including Ute Lehrer, Deborah Cowen, Stefan Kipfer, Bryan Miller, Elvin Wyly, Doug Young, Per Roe, Markus Moos, Jan Nijman, Jill Grant, Michael Ekers, and Nick Phelps will participate in two panel sessions organized by Roger Keil at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Seattle, Washington, on 13 April 2011:
Abstract:
As we have entered a majority urban world, urbanization has changed. Many, perhaps most new urbanites around the world live in suburbs, not in classical inner cities. But even what we imagine suburbia to be has changed dramatically. This is true for those who reside in single family homes on the edge because they want to part from urban lifestyles (as it has been the case in the US suburb of the past century); those who live in tower block peripheries of Canadian, European or Chinese cities; or those in squatter settlements in the global South. They share an experience, which is sub-urban: they remain outside the city in material, conceptual and often in experiential terms although they may become the demographic, cultural, economic or political centres of metropolitan regions.
Our panels propose to take a fresh look at how suburbs are becoming the 'normal' way in which urbanization proceeds in the 21st century. We will ask wether the normativity of the urban is still mostly determined from the centre outward or do the suburbs come into the conceptual centre of urban geography? Have we overlooked the similarities among various forms of peripheral development by concentrating on the phenomenological or experiential differences between various forms of peripheral urban development? What are the challenges for metropolitan governance? What do we need to know about the development of land and infrastructure? Our panel will broach these and related questions, and will attempt to bring the suburbs into the core of urban geography.
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