CityLAB II – Urban Studies Summer School / 16-20 June 2014

CityLAB II – Urban Studies Summer School

Theme: Suburbanism

Organised by: Stijn Oosterlynck (OASeS) & Ilja Van Damme (CSG)

Date: 16-20 June 2014

Recent years have seen a revival of interest in the study of suburbs, suburbanization and suburbanism. Central to this revival is a concern with the empirical diversity of suburbs and processes of suburbanization as well as with the growing internal and spatial differentiation of suburbs due to the impoverishment, increased ethnic diversity, densification and sprawl of economic activities in an increasing number of suburbs. These concerns undermine established understandings of suburbanism and turn the study of suburbs into a promising field for conceptual renewal and interdisciplinary reflection.

The second edition of CityLAB, organized by the Institute for Urban Studies will explore both the empirical diversity of suburbs and their increasing internal differentiation from an interdisciplinary perspective. It will examine the complexity of suburban phenomena from insights deriving from sociology, history, economic geography, political sciences, architecture and urban planning. Its target group is PhD and early stage post-doctoral researchers who want to develop such multi-perspectival understanding of suburbs, suburbanization and suburbanism and become more sensitive to the diversity of actually existing suburbs. The CityLAB Summer School is explicitly international and interdisciplinary in orientation and will take full advantage of its location in one of the most (sub)urbanized regions in Western Europe, Belgium. The programme combines international and local speakers, and two field trips to explore the suburban diversity of the biggest city of Flanders, the sprawling port town Antwerp. Roger Keil (Faculty of Environmental Sciences, York University) and Mark Clapson (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Westminster) will deliver keynote lectures, and engage in discussion with the participants on the basis of their own research.

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