Category Archives: conferences

by | 29/03/2013 · 10:36

Invitation to City Branding Symposium in Beijing

BeijingOn October 23 to 25 this year, the 2nd City Branding Symposium focusing especially on China will be held at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The conference theme is “Positioning Cities: Innovative and Sustainable Strategies for City Development and Transformation”.

The symposium is a follow-up from the China Symposium, which was held in Stockholm in August 2012, and had the theme “Chinese mega-cities in the world: Challenges, opportunities and consequences of global positioning strategies”. Continue reading →

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by | 18/02/2013 · 09:31

Some thoughts on the Place Management and Place Branding Conference at Manchester Metropolitan University

The old Dunlop factory in Manchester

The old Dunlop factory in Manchester

by Ares Kalandides

Back to everyday life after almost a week in Manchester, I will try to write down my thoughts on the conference while they’re still fresh. One reason I enjoyed it immensely was that it was organized almost entirely by Prof. Cathy Parker from the Manchester Met, so that I could relax and be part of it. 100 delegates from several continents spent two intensive days (not to mention the nights) together talking, discussing, presenting and arguing over place management, place marketing and branding. Here are some of the things I got from it: Continue reading →

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by | 07/02/2013 · 10:40

RC21 ORG > Research Committee 21 on Sociology of Urban and Regional Development of the International Sociological Association

Research Committee 21 (RC21) of the International Sociology Association, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies (FURS) and Humboldt University at Berlin invite applications for 25 places on our third collaborative School on Comparative Urban Studies, to be held in Berlin from 17 August to 3 September 2013. The School is being held in conjunction with the RC21 Conference on the theme of “Resourceful Cities”, to be held on 29-31 August. Continue reading →

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by | 29/01/2013 · 08:31

Spaces of Democracy: An evening with Doreen Massey at the Humboldt University

Think & Drink

Think & Drink

by Ares Kalandides

Reading Doreen Massey’s numerous essays that now span a 40-year career, one phrase sticks out regularly: “Geography matters!” It is sometimes put as simply and poignantly as that; sometimes in an more implicit, but still very straightforward way. For Doreen Massey this is not only an intellectual pastime. Place and space are the very materials on which her political activism is based, the stuff that keeps her going. And it’s about space that she talked again at the Think & Drink Colloquium of the Humboldt University yesterday, Monday 28th January 2013.

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by | 23/01/2013 · 11:48

Announcement: Doreen Massey at Drink & Think Colloquium at the Humboldt University Berlin

doreen massey

A most exceptional thinker and activist: Doreen Massey is a guest of the Drink & Think Colloquium of the Georg Simmel Centre for Metropolitan Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin on Monday 28th January, at 6 PM, Raum 002, Universitätsstraße 3b.

Geographies in the current political conjuncture

Abstract: One of the themes of Doreen Massey’s work has been that ‘geography matters’.  In this session of Think and Drink she will reflect on this theme in general, and also with specific relation to the politics of the current conjuncture.

Here is a link to the Drink & Think Colloquium series

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by | 11/01/2013 · 08:41

Places available for the Research Colloquium and the Masterclass – Place Management and Branding Conference

Research Colloquium

13 February 2013

A one-day workshop, suitable for students of place management and branding and early career researchers in the area to develop their research proposals, presentations skills and learn how to get published.  In addition, those attending the colloquium, who have a paper accepted in the conference, have an opportunity to compete for one of the ‘best new researcher’ slots in the full conference programme. Continue reading →

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by | 12/11/2012 · 15:22

Tourism in Berlin – Opportunities and Challenges for the City

by Ares Kalandides

On Saturday 10th November 2012, several Berlin groups of the German Green party organized a one-day conference to talk about tourism and its consequences for Berlin. The context is important: in 2011, before the Berlin elections, there had been several very controversial public discussions on tourism, which were covered by the media (1)(2)(3) and led to a substantial polarization of the discussion. I did not manage to stay for the whole conference, but I was on the initial panel and would like to repeat here what I said: Continue reading →

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by | 01/11/2012 · 11:00

Urban Manufacturing/Manufacturing the Urban in Zürich

by Ares Kalandides

Last Saturday I wrote a short blog entry with some very quick thoughts after visiting the conference re:Art:the:URBAN in Zürich. These thoughts did not relate to the panel I chaired, but were critical observations on the way we talk (and particularly do not talk) about our cities in times of crisis. Today I would like to sum up some of the most important observations of our panel, Urban Manufacturing, with Dieter Läpple, Arnold Reijndorp and Travor Davies.

The main issue of the panel Urban Manufacturing (and the following one, Manufacturing the Urban) was whether small-scale entrepreneurial activities have a positive impact on urban space (e.g. activate public spaces, provide innovative programmes, invest in the maintenance of buildings etc.). In reverse, it examined how urban spaces themselves provide ideal conditions for urban manufacturing (inspiration, audience, markets). The panels Urban Manufacturing/Manufacturing the Urban aimed to “elucidate the reciprocal relationship between urban manufacturing and urban space and how it can be made productive for a sustainable development of contemporary cities”. As usual the actual content of the panel differed substantially from this programmatic text: Continue reading →

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by | 27/10/2012 · 18:19

The Mask of the Red Death or the limited geographical imagination of the European North

Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” by Harry Clarke (1889-1931). Published in 1919.

by Ares Kalandides

I just came back to Berlin from a two-day conference in Zürich called re:ART:the:URBAN, where I was invited to chair a panel on “Urban Manufacturing”*. I am very grateful to my hosts, Kees Christiaanse and Tim Rieniets, for this opportunity and their hospitality. It is great being in Zürich and ETH is always an important centre of academic reflection. Yet, I also want to air some other thoughts – a “malaise” as I called it during the conference – hoping that I am not alone.

This malaise is related to my feeling that the political is absent in many of our discussions about places – cities in particular. We talk about artists, their role in the city; we talk about citizens as “users” (oh! what horror!); we talk about urban interventions, the “creative class”, migration etc. in a feel-good bubble. As if the crisis we have experienced around us for the past 4 years is taking place in a parallel universe; as if such a crisis (political and cultural as much as economical) could leave anything standing; as if there were a place where we’re safe from it. Do you remember Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Mask of the Red Death”? Continue reading →

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by | 09/08/2012 · 15:54

International Place Branding Conference in Utrecht 2012: “Special Edition: Roots – Politics – Methods Conference Proceedings” available for download now!

Special Edition: Roots – Politics – Methods
Conference Proceedings

The book is now available for download under www.inpolis.de

The first two International Place Branding Conferences have provided a highly valuable input into the still emerging field of place branding. In Berlin 2008 and Bogotá 2011, scholars, practitioners, and city representatives came together to discuss various aspects related to the branding of places. A ‘common language’ among the different disciplines has been sought and different perspectives on the issue have been examined. The conferences provided important insights to the subthemes of place branding, but open questions remained. These questions deal with the general understanding of what the place branding profession does as distinguished from affiliated fields, such as place marketing or city management. Conference participants urged to solve the ambiguities in the analytical understanding of place branding.

It is for these unsolved issues that the format of a special session was developed for the International Place Branding Conference. Scholars and practitioners met in Utrecht January 2012 to approach place branding from a theoretical and methodological standpoint. Keynote lectures, paper sessions and panel discussions contributed to a more precise understanding of the definition, concepts, and roots of place branding. Also, the special session helped in enriching the dialogue between various actors from different disciplines.

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