Reclaiming the City: Building a Just and Sustainable Future

by: Robert Grimm - September 21st, 2010  

Urban Affaires Anual Conference

41st Conference
Reclaiming the City: Building a Just and Sustainable Future
New Orleans, Louisiana
Sheraton New Orleans Hotel
March 16-19, 2011

Rebuilding efforts–in New Orleans, Port au Prince and other parts of the world– provide an opportunity to examine the paths selected for public policy and private investment, and how these decisions shape the future of urban places. Six years after the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is in the midst of a large-scale rebuilding effort and redefinition of place. Powerful dynamics at the local, regional, national and international levels filter various values and interests to yield a powerful development logic. This logic determines the nature of change, its impacts, and most importantly, who benefits and who ultimately pays. New Orleans provides a dramatic and significant context to examine the processes and outcomes of change. However, developmental change in New Orleans has much in common with transformative processes that occur in other urban places. Critical perspectives suggest that change and transformation of cities across the globe, increasingly favors private capital, large institutions, and visitors. This bias poses certain challenges to the possibility of building a just and sustainable future for cities. The conference is an invitation to consider a broad range of concepts and strategies for rebuilding that can yield urban futures that are both equitable and sustainable. The challenges embedded in seeking such futures are significant. The conference will seek to identify ways to overcome those barriers while reclaiming the city.

In keeping with the tradition of UAA Annual Meetings, we encourage proposals that focus on the conference theme as well as submissions on the array of research topics typically found at UAA conferences:

  • Arts, Culture, Media
  • Disaster Planning for Urban Areas, Disaster Management, Emergency Preparedness, Cities and Security
  • Economic Development, Redevelopment, Tourism, Urban Economics, Urban Finance
  • Education, Schools, Universities
  • Environmental Issues, Sustainability, Urban Health, Technology and Society
  • Globalization, International Urban Issues
  • Governance, Intergovernmental Relations, Regionalism, Urban Management
  • Historic Preservation, Space and Place
  • Housing, Neighborhoods, Community Development
  • Human/Social Services, Nonprofit Sector
  • Immigration, Population and Demographic Trends
  • Infrastructure, Capital Projects, Networks, Transport, Urban Services
  • Labor, Employment, Wages, Training
  • Land Use, Growth Management, Urban Development, Urban Planning
  • Poverty, Welfare, Income Inequality
  • Professional Development, The Field of Urban Affairs
  • Public Safety in Urban Areas, Criminal Justice, Household Violence
  • Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Diversity
  • Social Capital, Democracy and Civil Society, Social Theory, Religion and the City
  • Urban Design, Urban Architecture
  • Urban Indicators, Data/Methods, Satisfaction/Quality of Life Surveys
  • Urban Politics, Elections, Citizen Participation
  • Urban Theory, Theoretical and Conceptual Issues in Urban Affairs

Proposal Deadline—October 1, 2010

About: Robert Grimm

All over Europe, cities are faced with the challenge of using cultural resources to re-position their city in an increasingly culturally and economically diversified European space. Related to this is a clear recognition of the growing importance of cultural resources for economic and community development. This produces new opportunities and challenges for local cultural planning and management. In order to fully exploit the innovative and supportive role of culture in European urban development, it will be necessary to develop a new socially and culturally sensitive professionalism, able to cross the boundaries between the arts, design, urban and spatial planning, public policy and the market, artistic creativity and cultural management. The MA in European Urban Cultures offers a specialist programme aimed at graduate students from Europe and elsewhere with undergraduate degrees in subject areas such as the social sciences; cultural and leisure studies; art, design and architecture; urban theory and planning; cultural marketing and management. The course is also targeted at professionals and administrators eager for the latest experiences, ideas and insights in urban cultural policy.