Session - City of Negotiation: Social Innovations and Urban Living

Conveners: Gill Harold and Denis Linehan, Department of Geography, University College Cork, Ireland.

Amongst the greatest conceits of the urban geographer is that the city is knowable, and explicable to models, maps and theorization. But beneath this cloak of explanation is a city of negotiations, ever multiple, never complete, straining to hold its structure, exclusions and spatial rhythms intact. On the theme of negotiation, this session will chase this city of arbitrations – the sites, the practices and the provocations that represent the hub of social innovation, the edge of transformation, where rules get broken and new ways of urban living are conceived and become possible. The session seeks interventions from these vulnerable and uncertain spaces, shaped by disruption, mediations and intercessions from innovators, protesters and the oppressed that aim to create a new design for life.

We invite abstracts of up to 250 words for paper submissions which are responsive to the themes evoked in the above call. Please send a copy of your abstract, along with the proposed paper title, to both organisers - Gill Harold (g.harold@student.ucc.ie) and Denis Linehan (d.linehan@ucc.ie).

The closing date for submissions is Friday 23rd October, 2009.