School of Spatial Planning TU Dortmund University Dortmund Conference 2012 on Spatial Planning Research 9-10 February 2012 Call for Papers THE MOBILE AND THE IMMOBILE People • Ideas • Objects • Cultures • Capital.
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The School of Spatial Planning in association with the Akademie für Raumforschung und Landesplanung cordially invites you to submit a paper to the Dortmund Conference 2012 which is the first in a projected biennial series of conferences on interdisciplinary issues in spatial planning and spatial research. The topic of the 2012 conference is 'The Mobile and the Immobile'. The development and transformation of the mobile – the movement of people, objects, and ideas – are a key factor in the understanding of the global transformations of space. On a large scale as well as in the tiny spaces of everyday life, we can observe how humans and other species, but also money, commodities, information, or values are moving around. Even in our globalized world, filled with exchanges and migration, we cannot think about the mobile without considering the immobile. The mobile and the immobile create and depend on each other. The relationship and the interactions between the mobile and the immobile, in fact, produce cities and regions, social spaces, and urban patterns. The tools of movement, such as cell phones, computers, airplanes, or fast trains, require vast amounts of spatially fixed, immobile infrastructure. New technologies facilitate the virtual mobility of people standing still, yet physical mobility has increased along with mobility in cyberspace. In Western societies, social and spatial immobility is often associated with exclusion and a lack of integration. Yet, voluntary immobility also is a sign of luxury, affordable only to the wealthy. Movement can result in shifts of power structures and new spheres of influence. The free flow of money determines the fortune of real estate markets. 'Travelling ideas' and values change municipal planning goals as well as regional traditions. The interdependence and transformation of the mobile and the immobile are closely connected to technological, economic, political, social, and cultural processes of change that deeply affect spatial planning. We are inviting the submission of conference papers examining the mobile and the immobile on all spatial levels from a theoretical, empirical, or planning perspective. We expect to learn from all submissions more about the theory and practice of planning the mobile and the immobile.
Conference papers may examine the following topics, among others:
- conceptual frameworks for the analysis, explanation, and governance of spatial dimensions of the mobile and the immobile
- social constructions of the mobile and the immobile (e.g., compulsory or voluntary mobility and immobility, socially upward and downward mobility, symbolic and legal aspects of mobility)
- multi-local households, migration, and transnationality • the importance of places, housing and neighborhood in a mobile world
- the effect of technology, infrastructure, and institutions on the mobile and the immobile • innovation, distribution, and diffusion of ideas, commodities, symbols, and traditions
- mobile and immobile capital – multinational corporations, hedge funds financial markets, real estate development – as driving forces of urban and regional development
- sustainability and the quality of life with regard to the mobile and the immobile (e.g., environmental resource management, landscape protection, regional landscapes of culture, tourism, centralized and decentralized infrastructure)
- the impacts of the mobile and the immobile on political and social participation
We cordially invite you to submit your abstract in English or German (not more than 3,500 characters). Deadline is August 31, 2011. Please send your abstract and an short CV to
Local organizing committee: Prof. Dr. Susanne Frank, Prof. Dr. Christian Holz-Rau, Prof. Dr. Hans Heinrich Blotevogel (ARL), Dr. Sandra Huning, PD Dr. Joachim Scheiner, Dr. Nina Schuster, Dr. Anja Szypulski Homepage of the conference: http://www.raumplanung.tu-dortmund.de/rp/
