Call for Papers (Deadline: October 1)

European Association for Urban History
11th International Conference on Urban History
Prague, August 29 - September 1, 2012
http://www.eauh2012.com

Main Session M46
Postwar Planning in Transnational Perspective

Session Organizers:

• Tracy Neumann (Wayne State University)
• Roger M. Picton (Trent University)
• Matthew Wendeln (New York University)

Since the publication of Daniel Rodgers' Atlantic Crossings, urban historians have increasingly explored the transnational flow of ideas about how to organize cities. However, this scholarship has primarily focused on the municipal scale in the period before World War II. We therefore invite papers that bring a transnational or comparative methodology to bear on planning postwar cities in Europe and North America, particularly on topics that encourage a more careful articulation of how power operates between and on a variety of scales. We are interested in how ideas about planning were exchanged across national borders and how planning in turn shaped trans-Atlantic shifts in political ideologies. These can range from specific urban interventions, such as the provision of housing, to the way cities fit into broader programs of social reform, Keynesianism, or market-oriented competition.  Studying cities across nations raises a number of questions. When did urban actors look abroad for information about urban trends and planning practices, and when did they focus on local or national frameworks? How did knowledge, norms, and practices circulate?  Did planning policies in different countries converge or were common concerns refracted by local traditions? Likewise, when did people imagine a common fate for North Atlantic cities and when did they insist on distinctive trends-for example, opposing idealized "European" and "American" urban traditions? Were these comparisons and exchanges primarily the realm of officials, experts, and corporate interests, or did transnational social movements address common themes such as the urban crisis, the right to the city, and struggles for public space? How did planning institutions operate as filters for wider economic and ideological processes? Did transnational networks and the role they promoted for cities fit common narratives about the domination of a state centered approach to planning in the postwar years?  Topically, we solicit papers on ideology and planning practices, state-led urban renewal, deindustrialization and urban economic planning, circulation and traffic, and urban political ecology, among others. We encourage contributions from all disciplines.

Please submit abstracts (500 words) through the conference website by October 1, 2011:

http://www.eauh2012.com/sessions/call-for-paper-proposals/

If you have questions or require additional information, please contact Tracy Neumann (tracyneumann@gmail.com)

Tracy Neumann
Department of History
Wayne State University