The Spaces & Flows: Seventh International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies embraces the theme of Planetary Urbanization in the Modern World. In recent years, this provocative notion has exploded across the academic terrain in urban studies and the social sciences. Its leading voices proclaim the need to recognize a new reality of unprecedented flows, fluxes, and movements in a relentlessly expanding urbanized world. The globe has become substantially urbanized, as near and far flung places interconnect (all but uninhibited by the frictions of time and space) in a moving and blanketing urbanization. The effects are proclaimed to be evident on the ground: the end of “wilderness,” the disintegration of hinterlands, and the loss of true country terrains. This reality, to these voices, renders the city as analytic object in urban studies antiquated.
On the changing nature of the urban, and its relations to the ‘extraurban’.
On the ecosystemic dynamics of different human socio-spatial configurations.
On the flows of objects and knowledge/culture and the socio-spatial dynamics of contemporary life.