Culture in Urban Space: Urban Form, Cultural Landscapes, Life in the City
3-7 February 2020
Malmö, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark
https://www.islanddynamics.org/cultureurbanspace2020

This multidisciplinary, international conference concerns the intersections and interactions between culture and urban space. The city cannot be understood in terms of its buildings, infrastructure, and physical geography alone. Urban materiality is inextricably linked with city life: Urban spaces are influenced by the cultures that inhabit them, and urban form shapes these cultures in turn. This conference brings together researchers, planners, designers, and architects from around the globe to explore the mutual influence of urban culture and urban form.

Impacts of past urban planning reverberate long after original rationales have become obsolete: Fortifications (walls, moats, fortresses), coastlines and land reclamation, transport infrastructure (roads, bridges, city gates), and other elements of the built environment structure future development. Aspects of urban form contribute to dividing the city into neighbourhoods, determining which areas flourish while others decay, encouraging shifts from industrial to tourism to leisure uses. The city's architectures affect the cultures of the people who use them: Different kinds of housing foster different forms of sociality or isolation, and different networked infrastructures promote different pathways to the internal cohesion and/or citywide integration of urban cultures. Whether urban cultural landscapes evolve gradually over time or result from decisive, top-down planning, they reflect and influence the city's multitude of identities, industries, cultural politics, ethnic relations, and expressive cultures.

About the conference
Culture in Urban Space allows delegates to contextualise knowledge and engage with the local community through three days of walking-based field trips. On 3-4 February, delegates will explore the morphological and cultural distinctions of Malmö, Sweden, through walks though diverse neighbourhoods across the city, with an emphasis on the ways in which the urban environment has transformed over the centuries. Conference presentations will take place on 5-6 February at Comfort Hotel Malmö. On 7 February, delegates will have the opportunity to explore culture in urban space in the historic city of Copenhagen, Denmark, just across the water from Malmö.

About Malmö
Malmö, the third-largest city in Sweden, is a place in which the interplay of culture and urban space are set in sharp relief. Located close to the historically significant cities of Copenhagen and Lund, Malmö was long a site of strategic and military importance, leading to intensive fortification since the Middle Ages, including the construction of Malmöhus castle in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Malmö's beautiful 'old town' (Gamla Staden) is located on an artificial island, containing the city's core retail and leisure district within an irregular grid plan. The nearby neighborhood of Västra Hamnen represents an attempt to transform a former industrial area into an smart eco-city, presenting a model of sustainable urbanism.

Malmö is, however, more than just its showpiece historical and high-tech districts. Beyond the harbour and past the old fortifications, the city presents a mix of cultures, architectures, and environments, with popular parks, markets, and squares structuring and being structured by urban life. The bridge/tunnel system connecting Malmö with Copenhagen opened in 2000, helping to create a cross-border economic region.

How to propose a presentation
This multidisciplinary conference welcomes presentations addressing any aspect of the intersection and interaction between culture and urban space in any region of the world as well as comparative perspectives. Presentations last 15 minutes and will be followed by around 5 minutes’ question time. The deadline for abstracts is 30 June 2019. To propose a presentation, please follow the instructions at https://www.islanddynamics.org/cultureurbanspace2020.

If you have any questions, please contact convenor Adam Grydehøj ( آدرس ایمیل جهت جلوگیری از رباتهای هرزنامه محافظت شده اند، جهت مشاهده آنها شما نیاز به فعال ساختن جاوا اسكریپت دارید )