Urban Economic and Planning Geographies
- Jennifer Clark – Ohio State University – clark.3550@osu.edu
- Francis Owusu – Iowa State University – fowusu@iastate.edu
Recent discussions in city and regional planning and in economic geography have returned to the central role of cities to shaping sustainable and equitable urban and regional economies. At the same time, the rapid rate of urban change means that cities and regions are facing unprecedented challenges made more acute by the layered and interrelated processes of climate change and embedded structural inequalities. Both people and places have begun to push back against these impacts through the mobilization of social movements and demands for policy change. Economic geographers and urban planners find themselves tasked with rethinking interventions ranging from social policy to infrastructure investments in a search for solutions to these growing social, environmental, and economic challenges. As regional variation increases, so too does the work of city and regional planning in analyzing the effects of these changes and the interventions deployed to confront them.
Economic geographers are well placed to advance a rapidly evolving conversation about the scope of the public sector’s role in defining, provisioning, and regulating the urban fabric that will determine the economic development infrastructure --- its character and coverage --- on which regions and communities build (or fail to build) sustainable economies in the 21st century. They are also leading the discussion of how global dynamics are impacting cities around the world, including how the process simultaneously creates opportunities for cities while widening inequalities.
The Urban Economic and Planning Geographies Theme welcomes submissions on topics including, but not limited to:
- Socio-demographic changes and urban economies
- Economic implications and planning for cities and regions with declining populations
- Urban and economic implications of aging populations
- Impacts of migration on urban and regional economies
- Socio-cultural, political, and economic impacts of historic and cultural preservation
- The expanding definitions of infrastructure and the implications for urban and regional economies
- “Soft infrastructure” public services/programs
- “Hard infrastructure” projects
- Digital Infrastructure
- Infrastructure for smart and connected small communities
- The effects of structural inequalities on urban economies (inclusive of the impacts of structural racism on spatial inequalities)
- Race and differential policing enforcement
- Planning implications of differential housing markets (including issues of access to capital and increasing financialization) and labor markets (including the planning implications of low wage and precarious labor)
- Inequalities in management and provisioning of infrastructure (e.g., mobility/transportation, public health, water, energy, communications)
- Neighborhood Change, Gentrification, and Inclusionary Land Use Planning
- Role of universities and anchor institutions in urban regeneration
- Global transformations and the future urban geographies
- Informalization of urban economies
- Informationalization and management of cities (including privatization)
- The rise of Gig Economy and ‘virtual capital’ (e.g., mobile money)
- The urban planning implications of shared services like ride hailing, car sharing, home sharing, and co-working and implications for urban planning
- Impacts of climate change, and ecological and health emergencies such as the current COVID-19
- Impacts of China and other New Economic Powers
- New urban development ideas, urban fantasies, and splintering in the global south
- New city masterplans, satellite city developments, and mega-infrastructural projects
- Construction of new housing developments and real estate speculation in middle and high-income markets
- Emergence of shopping malls, gated communities, and luxury housing projects
- Evolving economic geography of “Urban Demonstration Projects and Programs” (e.g. Linear Parks, Innovation Districts, Enterprise Zones, BIDS, Ecodistricts, Technology Testbeds --- rise of hubs, districts, zones)