Second Conference Urbanism At Borders. Malaga, 23-25 October 2019

The multifaceted digital and economic divides are transmuting our understanding of the relationship between socio-economic orders and challenge the existence of the territoriality. The straight line that connects two points in the territory is at the same time the optimization of resources and the cause of the crisis of any pre-existent territorial syntaxis (Farinelli, 2007). To comprehend what befalls on the boundaries and peripheries of these straight lines we need a change of scale: to look for the -often hidden- relations between different fragments of the territory, the city, of its citizens.

The hidden relations of this territoriality comprise thresholds, and are ‘places’ in themselves, overwhelmed with changing meanings, configurations and positions in very rapid periods of time; occasionally losing their inherent meaning. At the same time, the identity of boundaries between social, cultural and ethnic groups are dynamic, momentary and offer a different kind of borders inside our built environment, which need to be analyzed.

Concurrently, a (city)place without polarities is a place(city) without competitions – society contests against smaller denominators of other social entrants by manifesting socio-economic gaps and urban voids. The societal contests generate fragmentations that encroach the equilibrium locally as well as the country-wide distribution of wealth and development. Ethnicity is a historical formation, so do the emerging political and economic transformations that prompt a range of eccentricities in urban conditions. Economic dynamics are a powerful shaper of urban form and society. Policies as political tools are instrumental in mediating between various urban eccentricities.

The upcoming 2nd Urbanism at Borders Global Conference in Malaga 2019 do not only aims to debate on the various existing realities where these polarities happen but also aim to advance knowledge through various researches capable of defining these eccentricities, questioning the bottom-up activism, critically reviewed the maverick governmental policies, or of any other interventionist urban theories. Also, if grounded in architecture and urbanism practices, the conference will look for radical proposals related to multidisciplinary actions in the fields of art, activism, human rights, law, amongst others.

Full details on the conference can be accessed here.