Deadline: 31 January 2022 | Conference: 24-26 August in Athens, Greece.
Panel 26 Peripheralisation: The production of ex-centric places as an ordinary process of extended urbanisation. Conveners: Christian Schmid, Metaxia Markaki | ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Call for papers for the upcoming RC21 conference in Athens, for a panel on Peripheralisation: The production of ex-centric places as an ordinary process of extended urbanisation. Abstracts should be max 300 words and the deadline is January 31. Please find submission details in the call below and make sure you select Panel 26 at the time of submission.

CALL FOR PAPERS | RC21 2022: 24-26 August in Athens, Greece | www.rc21athens2022.com

Panel 26
Peripheralisation: The production of ex-centric places as an ordinary process of extended urbanisation
Conveners: Christian Schmid, Metaxia Markaki | ETH Zurich, Switzerland

How do “peripheries” form? And how does urbanization generate processes of peripheralization? Today, urban research is increasingly confronted with processes of extended urbanization that unfold far beyond cities and agglomerations: novel patterns of urbanization are crystallizing in agricultural areas and in remote landscapes, challenging inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded and dense settlement type. While certain territories of extended urbanization experience strong economic growth, others are affected by processes of peripheralization, particularly less accessible and sparsely populated areas, mountainous and archipelagic regions, and territories with weak regional centralities. As a consequence, many regions experience deep socio-economic and ecological restructuring, the loss and relocation of economic activities, selective emigration, resulting in economic marginalization and depopulation, whereby permanent settlements are eroding and seasonal or sporadic movements of people to and from central urban areas are becoming more pronounced. The production of such territories is strongly put forward through moments of economic, ecological or health crisis, offering the pretext for politics of exception, which eventually become a permanent condition and often are reinforcing processes of extended urbanisation and peripheralisation.

These observations advocate for a radical reconceptualization of the experience of periphery at various spatial scales. Peripheralization is not a static spatial condition but emerges as a dynamic process that is shaped by uneven urbanization and complex multi-scalar relations. This panel session invites contributions that investigate such processes in different scales and geographies and discuss both their socioeconomic and ecological implications, as well as the emancipatory potential in ex-centric territories in times of exception. It further asks for investigations that challenge and renew extant methodologies and forms of theory building, and encourage de-centred perspectives on the urban.
Please submit your abstracts (max 300 words) using the RC21 Athens platform: https://pcoconvin.eventsair.com/rc21/call-for-abstracts at the latest by 31st January 2022. Make sure to select “Panel 26. Peripheralisation: The production of ex-centric places as an ordinary process of extended urbanisation”. Questions can also be addressed to the session conveners: markaki@arch.ethz.ch and schmid@arch.ethz.ch.