IRS Lectures on Society and Space

This talk argues that there is a gap separating planning practice and the technical and legal requirements that smart city technologies entail. mehr Info

Regional development scholars have addressed increased attention to agency, aiming to balance the overly structures-oriented research by finding ways to study the recursive relationship between structures and human agency. mehr Info

Infrastructure is definitive of cities, intimately embedded in their constant change – their expansion and densification, their sprawl and contraction, their construction and reconfiguration. In addition to reconfiguring energy, water, sewage, solid waste, transportation, and communication systems to address persistently complex societal issues and reshape urban futures, infrastructure is also cultural. This lecture focuses on the cultural infrastructure that supports practices of producing, performing, consuming, and collecting culture, to affirm the centrality of culture to the imagination, mediation, and constitution of cities both in the present and into the future. mehr Info

I present a critical-colonial perspective to understanding the contemporary expansion of the so-called knowledge economy. The kernel of argument is that the knowledge economy can be understood as a geopolitical process of producing entangled yet different “worlds” through a logic of coloniality. mehr Info

Urban theory has long been struggling to find its feet. It has been criticised for an inclination to favour paradigmatic cities, for not being particularly inclusive or for ignoring the importance of context. The alternatives have been reproached for being particularistic, arbitrary and ignoring economic imperatives, voluntarism taking the upper hand over structural features. mehr Info

This IRS International Lecture on Society and Space will focus on the “human capital migration” phenomenon, i.e. the migratory behaviour of highly-educated, highly-skilled individuals. Much is known already on the determinants of human capital migration and also on the positive effects it has, in economic terms, on the receiving economies. mehr Info

Consequences of neoliberalism and entrepreneurial urban governance seem to be very clearly visible in some cities through scattered property-led spatial developments and investments. While the entrepreneurialisation of municipal governance is widely acknowledged in the scholarly literature, the extent and format of institutional and organisational structures that accompany neoliberal ideological shifts and market transitions often remain unclear.  mehr Info

Poverty and social exclusion exist in rural, as well as in urban, areas across the world. This paper begins by reviewing conceptualizations of social exclusion and its relation to place, arguing that social exclusion may be understood in terms of dynamic, multi-dimensional, relational processes which operate in localized contexts at multiple scales. Often this is considered primarily in terms of exclusion from labour markets or simply lack of income, but a full understanding of social exclusion can only be gained by considering the wider range of processes by which resources are gained and lost in our societies. mehr Info

How do cities manage the arrival and settlement of immigrants? This question is discussed by the Canadian journalist Douglas Saunders in his book "Arrival City: How the largest Migration in History is Reshaping Our World", published in 2011. In his book, Saunders lays out the conditions for success and failure of immigration-defined neighbourhoods around the world. mehr Info

Qualities of distance, proximity, isolation and connection materially shape political economies of innovation, and infuse how actors view their activities within networks of production, exchange and mobility. The peripheral presents challenges and frustrations, but also freedom from metropolitan norms. For over two decades, professor Chris Gibson has explored aspects of creative production in peripheral regions in such light. In this lecture, however, he focuses on disruptions to existing arrangements, new and unanticipated, that arise from ecological crises and accompanying regulatory responses. Emblematic of Anthropocenic economic geographies, upstream disruptions to resource flows challenge existing norms and practices in downstream production, reconfiguring core-periphery relations throughout global networks. mehr Info

Urbanization and the land question go hand in hand, in fact the land question is at the core of urban transformation on a global scale. In this lecture, Ute Lehrer will look at the suburban land question, where we can still find central aspects of the transformation process from a use value of land to an exchange value as a commodity within a capitalist society. She will also make reference to the land question that is posed within a colonial context, namely that of stewardship versus ownership. mehr Info