Call for papers: ‘Urban surfaces: values and uses of public walls’
Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference, London UK, 27-30 August 2024
Session organiser: Sabina Andron (University of Melbourne)
Session type: paper session (in-person only)
Session description:
Urban walls separate, divide, and protect; but they are also sites of display and communication, and powerful tools of social and political expression. This panel focuses on the social functions of urban walls and surfaces, and their potential to support creative, just, and inclusive urban life (Brighenti and Kärrholm 2019, Andron 2023).
In everyday urban practice, surfaces matter because they are intimately connected to practices of spatial justice and the right to the city. These concepts refer to citizenship and belonging, and to rights of occupation, affirmation, and self-determination of subjectivities in space. The design, management, and valuing mechanisms of urban surfaces in contemporary cities can therefore offer unique evidence for these social issues.
Recent years have seen repeated calls to emancipation from the tropes of flatness, superficiality and style that are associated with the study of surfaces (Bruno 2014, Ingold 2017, de la Fuente 2019, Halland 2023) – yet urban surfaces have still not been afforded the focused attention they deserve.
The panel invites contributions from researchers, artists, architects, and policy makers, to examine the roles and uses of various urban surfaces, and their contribution to the formation of urban cultures, materialities and atmospheres. We welcome contributions from disciplines such as urban and legal geography; cultural policy; architecture; sociology; urban planning and design; and communication, media, and semiotics studies.
Possible themes for 15-20min presentations include:
– Theorising surfaces as spatial and urban typologies
– Urban surfaces between public and private spaces
– Surfacing as verb, the layers of urban surfaces
– Ownership, use, and function of urban surfaces
– Legal and property considerations
– Surfaces as communicative devices: semiotics, atmospheres, signage
– Urban surface design and retrofitting
– Facadism, urban branding, and veiling of building surfaces
– Inscribing and cleaning surfaces: graffiti, murals, buffing
– Surface maintenance: protecting, cleaning, coating
Can a city be separated from its surfaces? Which urban experiences can be better understood through the study of urban surfaces? What are the material and textural properties of urban surfaces that contribute to the formation of urban character? And how can surfaces be used as technologies of sustainable design and social justice?
Please email a title, 300-word abstract, and keywords, along with details of all authors, to Sabina Andron sabina.andron@unimelb.edu.au by Friday 16 February 2024. Selected abstracts will be notified within a week.