Urban ARC 2020 | Equal Cities

IIHS Annual Research Conference  |  16 – 18 January 2020

This fourth edition of Urban ARC, the Annual Research Conference of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) will focus on the conceptual, theoretical and practical understanding of notions of equality and equity in the context of a rapidly urbanising world. More than 55 per cent of the world’s population now lives in urban regions (United Nations, 2018). In particular, urbanisation has rapidly increased in low- and middle-income countries in Asia and Africa, sometimes more than three or four times in the last 50 years (ibid). However, urban areas are now more unequal than they were 20 years ago: although cities have emerged as global economic platforms for production, innovation and trade, 75 per cent of the world’s cities have higher levels of income inequalities than two decades ago (UN Habitat, 2016). This is compounded by persistent challenges around urban growth and employment, affordable housing, and service provision as well as the emergence of newer concerns around climate change, growing insecurity and international migration.

 

While urban regions across the world present some of the most complex challenges with regard to environmental, economic, and social sustainability, they also offer some of the greatest opportunities. In recent years, global policy processes have also recognised the role that cities must play – the New Urban Agenda from Habitat III, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the IPCC 1.5C Special Report, the U-20 development agenda have all acknowledged the necessity for cities and urban regions to play a stronger role in tackling environmental, social, and economic challenges.  This has led to an urgent call to understand and address its inherent challenges.

 

Research on the urban has grappled with the conceptual nature of equality and equity as well as their everyday manifestations in lived experiences within urban agglomerations. Debates around equity in cities have engaged with a wide range of themes – around questions of identity (through the politics of race, or caste, for example), around issues of income inequality and poverty, on the implication of and the relationship between emergence of new forms of work and employment on the urban (through the ‘gig’ economy, for instance), spatial inequality, access to affordable housing and segregated cities, to mention a few. These have also often been determined by disciplinary boundaries and methodological approaches.

 

Urban ARC 2020 aims to build on these debates, and provide a space to contest, deliberate and engage in conversations on how to make our cities more equitable. We encourage submissions that engage with notions of equity and equality through a range of lenses, across theory and praxis, across geographical and spatial contexts, and discipline and methodologies. In doing so, ‘Equal Cities’ aims to address questions of equality and equity from various disciplinary spaces, emphasising cross-disciplinary and inter-sectoral approaches across the three days of the conference.

 

The format of the conference will be as follows:

16 January 202017 January 202018 January 2020
Session 1:

9:30 – 11:00

Registration (can continue all day)Paper presentationsPaper presentations
Break: 11:00 to 11:30
Session 2:

11:30 – 1:00

Paper presentationsPaper presentationsPaper presentations
Lunch: 1:00 to 2:30
Session 3:

2:30 – 4:00

Paper presentationsPaper presentationsInvited Panel
Break: 4:00 to 4:30
Session 4:

4:30 – 6:00

Invited PanelPaper presentationsConference ends at 4:30

 

The length of each panel/session will be 90 minutes with 4-5 papers and will have a designated scholar who will frame the panel and serve as chair.

 

Dates and Procedures:

9 November 2019Deadline for Submitting Abstracts
13 December 2019Announcement of Selected Papers
5 January 2020Submission of Completed Papers
16 – 18 January 2020Urban ARC 2020

 

Please note that abstracts have to be submitted with the following guidelines:

  1. Full title and name and institutional affiliation of the author.
  2. Complete end-text and in-text referencing in APA format.

 

Abstracts not in the prescribed format will not be considered for inclusion in the conference proceeding.

 

Location:

Urban ARC 2020 will be held at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements’ Bengaluru City Campus (BCC), 2nd Main Road, Sadashivanagar,
Bengaluru – 560 080.

 

Financial Support:

Limited Financial Support is available for early career scholars. Participants wishing to avail of support must contact research@iihs.ac.in

 

Copyright:

All copyright for original work will lie with the author. IIHS will use material only with prior permission.

 

About the Indian Institute for Human Settlements:

The Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) is a national education institution committed to the equitable, sustainable and efficient transformation of Indian settlements. More details about IIHS, its research, practice, and work can be found at iihs.co.in.

Urban ARC 2020 will be held from 16 to 18 January 2020 at the IIHS Bengaluru City Campus. The theme of the conference this year is ‘Equal Cities’. It will focus on the conceptual, theoretical, and practical understanding of notions of equality and equity in the context of a rapidly urbanising world with more urban inequality now than two decades ago. Within this larger context, the conference will host two plenaries focusing on different aspects of urban equality.

 

Opening Plenary: Framing Urban Inequality

16 January 2020  |   6 pm to 8 pm

 

The opening panel of the conference is titled “Framing Urban Inequality”. As part of this, speakers will share reflections from their work on questions that relate to challenges of urban inequality. The panel is scheduled for 16 January 2020, from 6 pm to 8 pm.

 

Chair:

Aromar Revi

 

Speakers:

Rathin Roy

Caren Levy

Colin McFarlane

 

Closing Plenary: Pedagogy of Urban Inequality

18 January 2020  |   6 pm to 8 pm

 

The closing panel of the conference, titled “Pedagogy of Urban Inequality”, is scheduled for 18 January 2020, 6 pm to 8 pm. As part of this, speakers will reflect from their research and practice on pedagogy in the Urban, and how this connects with questions of inequality.

 

Chair:

Aromar Revi

 

Speakers:

Bish Sanyal

Adriana Allen

Shrawan Acharya

Chandrika Bahadur

Nakshe-Kathe

Becoming Bangalore: Maps, Stories

Exhibition opening: 16 January 2020

 

Located in Southern India on the Deccan Plateau, Bangalore has been in existence for more than 450 years. In the 16th century, under the Vijayanagara Empire, Bangalore began to grow into a significant fortified settlement and market town, gaining regional dominance during the British Empire as a military or Cantonment town in the 1700s. While the older trading areas of Bangalore were under the control of the Mysore royal family, the northeastern parts were developed by the British.

 

The patterns of urbanization that emerged under the British and the Mysore royal family continue to echo earlier economic activities as well as the older physical layout and design. Although Bangalore is now a global hub for information technology and biotechnology, it has a long history of manufacturing. Now the fifth largest urban agglomeration in India, its spatial footprint and population has more than doubled since the early 1990s.

 

However, concerns remain about how sustainable or equitable this growth is. Rapid urbanisation, complex land markets, informalisation of work, a growing population, and consequent pressure on Bangalore’s physical infrastructure and natural resources have led to serious socio-economic and environmental challenges. Unplanned utilisation of resources is making the city prone to severe water scarcity, as the city continues to grow out in areas where there are serious groundwater deficits.

 

Drawing on research over the last two years, this exhibition charts the journey of a city, from a small trading settlement to contemporary Bangalore. It examines the city’s multiple intersecting transitions over the past 150 years, illustrating the changes in its lakes and water bodies, its economic and industrial transition, and the expansion of transport infrastructure.

 

These transitions are layered over Bangalore’s physical and spatial features and the city’s terrain.

 

This exhibition was completed with support from the KNOW (Grant Ref: ES/P011055/1) and PEAK Urban (Grant Ref: ES/P011225/2) programmes, funded by UKRI’s Global Challenge Research Fund.

16 January 2020
8:30 am – 9:00 am Registration
9:00 am – 9.30 am Opening remarks by Aromar Revi, Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements
9:30 am – 11:00 amPanel 1Informal work, gender and health
ChairShalini Sinha (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing)
Urban informal workers and health: An overview
Shalini Sinha (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing)
Exploratory study on maternal time-use and breastfeeding practices
Divya Ravindranath (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
Maternal and child health amongst domestic workers in Jaipur:
Preliminary findings and methodological learnings
Antara Rai Chowdhury (Indian Institute for Human Settlements) and Mewa Bharti (Rajasthan Mahila Kaamgaar Union)
11:00 am – 11:30 am Tea-Break
11:30 am – 1:00 pmPanel 2Understanding and managing urban risk: A critical exploration of the links between resilience and urban equality
ChairCassidy Johnson (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
Co-producing integrative risk governance in rapidly growing urban Africa: Lessons from informal settlements in Freetown, Sierra Leone
Emmanuel Osuteye, Cassidy Johnson (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL), Braima Koroma, Joseph Macarthy and Sulaiman Kamara (Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre – SLURC)
Imaginaries of disaster risk, resilience and livelihood priorities: Views from the front and the backline.
Allan Lavell (Latin American Social Sciences Institute – FLACSO)
Getting action on disaster risk: Co-production of disaster risk reduction in informal settlements in Dar es Salaam
Cassidy Johnson and Emmanuel Osuteye (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL), Tim Ndezi and Festo Makoba (Centre for Communitiy Initiatives Tanzania – CCI)
Rendering visible the multi-scalarity of everyday risks in Metropolitan Lima: towards the construction of a systemic and collaborative approach to urban resilience
Belén Desmaison and Luis Rodríguez Rivero (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru – PUCP)
1:00 pm – 1:30 pmUrban ARC Exhibition opening: Remarks by Caren Levy (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL) and Aromar Revi (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm Lunch
2:30 pm – 4:00 pmPanel 3Reframing and operationalising notions of prosperity and extreme poverty to address urban equality
ChairColin McFarlane (Durham University)
Pathways to the “good life”: Co-producing a contextual understanding of prosperity (maisha bora) in informal settlements in Dar es Salaam
Saffron Woodcraft (The Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL), Emmanuel Osuteye (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL), Tim Ndezi and Festo Makoba (Centre for Communitiy Initiatives Tanzania – CCI)
A study on the fishing communities in Da Nang city with special focus on assessing local assets and resources to improve their livelihoods in response to rapid urbanization
Phan Tran Kieu Trang (Danang Architecture University), Vo Ho Bao Hanh (UN Habitat – Vietnam) and Chu Manh Trinh (Cham island MPA)
Addressing urban equality in Havana: Interrogating the prosperity perspective
Jorge Peña Díaz, Joiselen Cazanave Macías, Dayané Proenza González (Technological University of Havana – CUJAE)
Understanding the relationships between socio economic shocks, poverty and inequality in Kampala
Shuaib Lwasa (Makerere University, Kampala)
4:00 pm – 4:30pm Tea-Break
4:30 pm – 6:00 pmPanel 4Navigating the Urban: Gendered experiences in the City
ChairDivya Ravindranath (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
Gender Equal Cities: ‘Right to the City,’ through the perspective of gender
Swapnil Saxena (National Institute of Urban Affairs)
‘As It May Be?’ Young women’s everyday actions in informal
settlements in Dehradun
Febe De Geest (The University of Melbourne)
Spatial justice, gender and urban transport nodes
Ankita Gaur and Tejendra Nagabhoina (Dehradun Institute of Technology University)
Social & gender analysis of road crash fatalities in India
R. Kanika Gounder and Sonal Shah (The Urban Catalysts)
Negotiating insecurities in housing and livelihood: Locating women workers in a resettlement colony
Malavika Narayan (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) and Abhishek Sekharan (Comic Relief, Sainsbury’s)
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm Opening Plenary: Framing Urban Inequality
 The opening panel of the conference is titled “Framing Urban Inequality”. As part of this, speakers will share reflections from their work on questions that relate to challenges of urban inequality. The panel is scheduled for 16 January 2020, from 6 pm to 8 pm.
Chair: Aromar Revi
Speakers: Rathin Roy, Caren Levy, Colin McFarlane
17 January 2020
9:00 am – 9:30 am Registration
9:30 am – 11:00 amPanel 5Taking people driven responses to urban inequality to scale: Opportunities and challenges
ChairBarbara Lipietz (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
Reducing urban inequality, scaling up the community development network: The case of Nakhon Sawan in Thailand
Supreeya Wungpatcharapon (Faculty of Architecture, Kasetsart University)
Understanding the contribution of community-led housing to the reduction of urban inequality in Yangon
Marina Kolovou Kouri and Shoko Sakuma (Women for the World)
Community empowerment and collaboration: Strategy towards urban equality in Yogyakarta
Annisa Hadny Zakiyaturrahmah (Arkom Foundation) and Achmad Uzair (State Islamic University Yogyakarta)
The experience of the Community Learning Platforms and the City Learning Platform in Freetown
Braima Koroma and Joseph Macarthy  (Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre – SLURC)
11:00 am – 11:30 am Tea-Break
11:30 am -1:00 pmPanel 6Understanding urban livelihoods: mobilities, rights and access
ChairNeethi P (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
 Informal, inadequate, inconsistent: Studying circular migrants’ temporary claims to public provisioning in Ahmedabad
Nivedita Jayaram, Raghav Mehrotra and Divya Varma (Aajeevika Bureau)
Peripatetic labour in Bangalore’s new service economy: Aspirations and pathways of (im)mobility in the global city
Carol Upadhya and Harpreet Kaur (National Institute of Advanced Studies)
Interstate migrants, policy bias and network-enabled access to city spaces: A social network analysis on inter-state migrant workers in Bangalore
Elishia Vaz (Manipal University) and Harshit Garg (Erasmus University)
New revanchism and urban ‘Undesirables’: Street-based sex workers of Bangalore
Neethi P (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Lunch
2:30 pm – 4:00 pmPanel 7Translocal pedagogies for urban equality
ChairShriya Anand  (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
 Learning the city through activist practice
Anand Lakhan and Gautam Bhan (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
Transformative pedagogies: Learning from the Habitat International Coalition – Latin America ‘Escuela de Urbanismo Popular
Adriana Allen, Julia Wesely (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL), Lorena Zárate and Maria Silvia Emanuelli (Habitat International Coalition Latin America – HIC-AL)
Planning education at Ardhi University: Opportunities and challenges for transformative planning and praxis in Sub-Saharan Africa
Wilbard Kombe (Ardhi University, Tanzania)
Urban learning, comparison, and inequality: Possibilities and limits
Colin McFarlane (Durham Univeristy)
4:00 pm – 4:30pm Tea-Break
4:30 pm – 6:00 pmPanel 8Finding place: Housing at the intersection of policy and praxis
ChairNamrata Kapoor (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
Slum dweller’s resettlements in Konark
Aathira Krishnan (Xavier School of Rural Management)
The work of a person and the GHARAUNDA Scheme: An exploratory study of housing and home concerns of adults with disabilities
Naina Seth (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad)
Defending the right to housing in Vizag: Local democracy without elections and modes of engagement with the State
G. Aarathi (Centre for Development Studies)
Typologies of rental housing for urban domestic workers
Kinjal Sampat and Nidhi Sohane (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
Housing the housed: A paradox between people’s needs, a central housing scheme and state regulations
Marina Joseph and Nitin Meshram (Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action)
7:30 pm onward Conference Dinner
18 January 2020
9:00 am – 9:30 am Registration
9:30 am – 11:00 amPanel 9Building pathways to urban equality: Reflections on knowledge translation, learning and impact
ChairAlexandre Apsan Frediani (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
Researching and supporting knowledge translation processes: Pathways to institutional change in Freetown and Havana
Alexandre Apsan Frediani, Camila Cociña (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL), Stephanie Butcher and Michele Acuto (Connected Cities Lab, The University of Melbourne)
How co-production changes the trajectories to urban equality: Learning from the experience in Hanna Nassif, Dar es Salaam
Wilbard Kombe, Alphonce Kyessi and Tatu Mtwangi-Limbumba (Ardhi University, Tanzania)
From participation to co-production: Impact from different trajectories on citizen’ involvement in urban change towards equality
Vanesa Castán Broto (Urban Institute, Sheffield University), Catalina Ortiz and Cassidy Johnson (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
Planning trajectories: Reflections on framing and inquiry
Vikas John and Priya Singh (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
11:00 am – 11:30 am Tea-Break
11:30 am -1:00 pmPanel 10Constructing communities in the Urban
ChairAditi Surie (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
Impact of Digitalization on Equity: Creating an Inclusive Urbanism
Jayasmita Bhattacharjee (School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal)
Re-building Juhapura: Role of civil society, community leadership and self-development initiatives in rebuilding a ghetto
Bhargav Hiren Oza (Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology)
Private surveillance in working-class, Muslim neighbourhoods of Delhi
Thalia Gigerenzer (Princeton University)
Unpacking gender and the fundamental role of unionising: A case of women street vendors in Ranchi, Jharkhand
Brishti Banerjee (Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action)
The citizenship crisis and Guwahati’s adequate housing shortage
Syeda Mehzebin Rahman (Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action)
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Lunch
2:30 pm – 4:00 pmPanel 11The ethics and politics of development and research practice
ChairCaren Levy (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
Dilemmas and reflections in the building of an ethics lexicon
Yael Padan and Jane Rendell (The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL)
Participation as planning’: ethical considerations around the limits of planning
Alexandre Apsan Frediani and Camila Cociña (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
Motivations and strategies underpinning the UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights
Amanda Fléty (UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights)
There is always something else: Reflections on the relationship between urban ODA research and policy in the UK
Christopher Yap and Colin Marx (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL)
4:00 pm – 4:30pm Tea-Break
4:30 pm – 6:00 pmPanel 12Urban equity and planning
 ChairSudeshna Mitra (Indian Institute for Human Settlements)
Planning and inequality: How spatial plans address the poor
Malini Krishnankutty (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay)
Role of state in urban restructuring in neoliberal India and its impact on urban life
Deepshi Arya (Tata Institute of Social Sciences)
Subverting the SDGs and the right to the city:  The lack of financial and social accountability in India’s smart cities mission
Ravikant Kisana (FLAME University), Glen David Kuecker and Farukh Sarkulov (DePauw University)
Understanding  formal  and  informal  relationships  in  settlement  upgrading  in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and their contribution to planning knowledge for urban equality in the global south
Johanna Brugman Alvarez (The University of Queensland)
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm Closing Plenary: Pedagogy of Urban Inequality
 The closing panel of the conference, titled “Pedagogy of Urban Inequality”, is scheduled for 18 January 2020, 6 pm to 8 pm. As part of this, speakers will reflect from their research and practice on pedagogy in the Urban, and how this connects with questions of inequality.
Chair: Aromar Revi
Speakers: Bish SanyalAdriana Allen, Shrawan Acharya, Chandrika Bahadur