Private urban governance/gated communities

[i]5th international conference of the interdisciplinary research network [/i] March 30 to April 4 2009 University of Chile, Santiago de Chile Call for panels: Cities around the globe are witnessing the development of new institutional arrangements by which urban spaces are organised - especially on a subcommunal scale. These new institutions involve public and private organisations, different forms of community organisations as well as organisations which cut across the public/private dichotomy. The governance of existing neighbourhoods is becoming re-engineered by institutions such as horizontal homeowner associations and business improvement districts. Newly urbanised areas are organised as private and often gated residential communities; as shopping, commercial and industrial neighbourhoods governed under multi-tenant property ownership and private government of communal space and services. The 5th conference of the research network on "private urban governance" will offer an international forum for the interdisciplinary discussion of the causes and consequences of these new forms of urban governance. The research network was established in 1999 and is an open network of currently more than 100 researchers from urban geography, planning, architecture, regional economy, political science, sociology, anthropology and other disciplines. The preparation of the conference follows a two-tiered scheme. We invite everybody interested to organise a panel (with three to six participants) on any topic related to private urban governance to send us the title for the proposed panel and an abstract outlining the idea of the panel (ca. 200 words). [b]Panel proposals should be submitted before the end of December 2007[/b]. Please do indicate if you already have in mind some papers to be presented in this panel (title, presenter, general ideal of the paper). Panels might for example focus on specific forms of private urban governance (e.g. business improvement districts, gated communities, tax exempt improvement areas); on specific theories and approaches which might help to understand and/or evaluate the development of private urban governance (e. g. new institutional economics, theories of social segregation, politic-economic approaches, discourse theory etc); or on the development of private urban governance in specific countries or regions. Based on these proposals the scientific committee will establish a structure of panels and publish the call for papers in spring 2008. Visit the official site: http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/glasze/