CSCR Events
We have a lively programme of lectures, seminars, conferences and other events. Details of forthcoming events are shown below. Information about past events can be found via the link on the left.
If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive information about CSCR events, please email cscr@durham.ac.uk.
Unmaking England?: Policy and Infrastructure in the Production of New State Spaces
Workshop co-organised by SURF, Salford University and CSCR, Durham University
This workshop concerns the way in which the public policy and infrastructure priorities of national states may increasingly privilege particular forms and scales of connection within national and international urban systems, so delinking, national urban systems, in the process. Within the UK context, for example, there are critical questions about the prioritisation of transportation investment in the ‘global city’ of London and the abandonment of commitments to ensure that northern cities were connected to key infrastructure systems at the European scale such as the channel tunnel rail link. With transport investment in England, especially, overwhelmingly geared towards linking London internally, connecting it seamlessly to its rapidly expanding international airport hubs, and providing TGV-quality rail links which terminate in its centre, the question arises: have we reached the stage where the idea of ‘knitting’ English national space through coordinated planning and infrastructure planning is dead? Such tensions and questions are also being raised with respect to the targeting of health, sustainability, science and research and social policy agendas around the needs and priorities of the growth agenda of London and South East. Consequently papers are invited to address one or more themes: 1. Strategic repositioning of London - Is London effectively ‘delinking’ from its relatively unimportant regional hinterlands as a corollary of policies and investment to support it’s closer interconnection into the global city system? 2. Implications for ordinary cities - What social and material implications does this delinkage have for the cities and regions left out of these policy priorities, investments and connections and are the strategies they can pursue in response inevitably improvised and constrained? 3. Reconceptualising public policy, infrastructures and scale - if such transformations are underway, what do they mean for the ways in which we theorise public policy, technology, spatial scale, national political geographies, and the geographical constitution of new state spaces? Please send a title and one page abstract to Simon Marvin (s.marvin@salford.ac.uk) and Stephen Graham (S.D.N.Graham@durham.ac.uk) before May 1st 2008. The workshop will have a maximum of 20 speakers over a 1½ day event, 30 minutes for presentation and plenty of time for discussion.
Contact s.d.n.graham@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Download this event in iCalendar format