Themes

Theme 1: Local-Global Spaces

  • Socio-economic inequalities: proximities and distances.
  • Ethnic and racial separation, juxtaposition and integration.
  • Economic development dynamics: changing sites of production and employment.
  • Local and global labor markets.
  • Property costs and the mortgage crisis.
  • Green dynamics: old and new energy systems.
  • Agricultural dynamics: old and new food systems.
  • Water dynamics: old and new sources and modes of access.
  • Waste dynamics: old and new garbage, sewerage and disposal/recycling dynamics.

Theme 2: Urban and Extraurban Spaces

  • Urban modernity: its forms and dynamics.
  • Edge-urban spaces and ‘sprawl’.
  • De-urban spaces: processes and consequences of urban decay and ‘hollowing out’.
  • Micro-urban spaces: the changing role and dynamics of small urban communities.
  • Greenfield spaces and regional development.
  • Off-the grid spaces and development in formerly remote places.

Theme 3: Centralizing-Devolving Flows

  • Transportation infrastructures and patterns.
  • Local-global production flows.
  • Grid-nodality versus distributed grid structures.
  • Dispersed versus centralized governance.
  • Demographic and other data: measuring spaces in relation to flows.
  • The spatiality of the internet.

Theme 4: Material-Immaterial Flows

  • Commuting and telecommuting.
  • Migration and diaspora.
  • Shopping centers and shopping online.
  • Learning sites and learning online.
  • Culture in person and culture online.
  • Old communications and information media and new.
  • Place and identity.
  • Neighborhood in practice and imagination.
  • Research agendas for spaces and flows.
  • Planning processes: the practices of (re)configuring spaces and flows.