Hybrid places: models and dynamics of Eastern and Western European Cities

Call for papers AAG 2013 Los Angeles - April 9th-13h 

Session title: Hybrid places: models and dynamics of Eastern and Western European Cities

The aim of this session is to examine developments in the metropolitan areas of Eastern and Western Europe in the post-socialist era from a comparative perspective.  Papers are invited which address the spatial aspects of development in terms of change across a number of dimensions, including but not limited to: socio-economic change, population flows, suburbanization, and strategic and local planning. Individual communications may focus on a particular urban area over time, or draw comparisons between two or more urban areas in Eastern and Western Europe. A number of axes of comparison that may be used in order to identify hybrid models and dynamics are suggested:

(1) Structures - how similar structures (social and functional) are shaped by different set of factors and under various circumstances.

(2) Processes – similar processes leading to different spatial structures (i.e. urban renewal and rehabilitation strategies, social filtering, exclusion, invasion and succession); old and new processes; new aspects/faces of old processes; new notions of old processes.

(3) Dynamics – social and spatial changes, trends in migration, inter and intra-metropolitan migration, residential mobility, urban functional conversion.

Please send a 250 word abstract to:

Petros Petsimeris  - Professor at Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne University) (petros.petsimeris@wanadoo.fr)

Magdalena Górczyńska - Research Associate at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Science (mgor@twarda.pan.pl)

Caroline Bouloc - Research and Teaching Assistant at Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne University) (caroline.bouloc@gmail.com)

Deadline: Midday (GMT) Saturday 20^th October 2012

The authors of successful submissions will be contacted by October 21th (evening), and will be expected to register and submit their abstracts online at the AAG website by October 24th, 2012.