Apologies for cross-posting
Last Call: CFP: AAG 2013 Los Angeles
Session organizers: Frank Witlox, Ben Derudder, Kobe Boussauw, Michiel van
Meeteren (Ghent University), Alain Thierstein, Michael Bentlage (Munich
University of Technology), Frank van Oort (Utrecht University).
Causes and consequences of the upscaling of urban systems
In the last decades we have witnessed a resurgence of research emphasizing the
relevance of cities and urban areas for economic vitality. As economies become
more complex and service oriented, the heterogeneity of labor, housing and
knowledge inputs as well as the provision of international connectivity all
privilege agglomerations as the site of innovations and economic growth.
Spatially these developments tend to lead to an upscaling of functional urban
regions. Upscaling implies that the boundaries of the urban area for several
functions tend to stretch themselves beyond the traditionally conceived
boundaries of the city. The result is a process of metropolitanization, where
urban regions increasingly become functionally polycentric. This applies to the
intra-urban scale where the central-place functions re-order themselves, as
well as the inter-urban scale where formally disjointed cities increasingly
interact and therefore might attain economies of scale due to borrowed size
effects.
This session seeks both theoretical and empirical contributions that elucidate
causes and consequences of metropolitanization and polycentric development in
the contemporary era. Contributions may include but are not limited to:
• Contributions that connect the upscaling of urban systems to the
networked character of the contemporary economy. To what extent do
transnational interlinkages contribute to the upscaling of urban systems and
to what extent are agglomeration economies contributing to global network
formation (the Neo Marshallian nodes in Global Networks thesis)?
• Research on restructuring and transformation of cities and places in
the context of urban systems
• The role of new infrastructural connections such as high speed rail
linkages, airline networks or metropolitan transit networks in polycentric
metropolitanization
• Issues of sustainable (mobility) management related to the upscaling
of urban systems
• Research on the consequences of increased accessibility and borrowed
size for central place formation
Scholars interested in presenting a paper in this session are invited to submit
an abstract of up to 250 words by October 11 to Michiel van Meeteren, Ghent
Univeristy (michiel.vanmeete...@ugent.be). Successful submissions will be
contacted by 15 October 2012 and will be expected to register and submit their
abstracts online at the AAG website by October 24th 2012.
