The ninth edition of Urban ARC, IIHS’ Annual Research Conference, will take place from 16 to 18 January 2025, virtually and in person, at the IIHS Bengaluru City Campus. The theme for this edition is ‘Urban Transitions’.

In the current discourse, ‘transition’ as a concept is increasingly pivotal in responding to questions around sustainability, social equity and climate justice. A key framework to emerge from this discourse is “just transition”, calling for equitable processes in the shift towards sustainability. This approach acknowledges that transitions—whether in energy, economic systems, or social structures—must seek to address driving and consequential inequalities by integrating social justice with environmental goals, ensuring that the transition pathways have positive outcomes for social, economic and natural systems. While transitions present opportunities for development, they need to be understood for their far reaching implications, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable.

Building on this, this year’s theme focuses on urban transitions. Globally, more than 55% of the population resides in urban areas, along with a heavy concentration of economic and political resources, making cities and their actors highly influential in meeting global sustainable development goals (United Nations, 2018). Cities are sites of transitions that are constantly shaping global realities beyond their geographical boundaries, making it crucial to study their unique transition pathways and intersections (Mahendra, A. et al,. 2021; Roy, 2009).

Cities of the Global South are transitioning at a faster pace than before (UN, 2018). Changing weather patterns, rise of the digital economy, the evolving role of the State and public institutions, expanding built environment, technological innovations, emerging health emergencies, growing regional disparities, and a ballooning population highlight some of the key changes taking place in the cities of the global South (Pieterse, 2019). We now know that the historical development pathways taken by the Global North are not replicable or relevant in the Global South, owing to structural differences, divergent starting points driven by colonisation and modernisation, resource constraints, and other economic factors (Harvey, 2005; Sachs, 2005; Kowalski, 2020; Roy, 2009). Much of this growth will take place in non-metropolitan settlements as well as those that are on the cusp of urbanisation (PEAK Urban, 2023). These are often off the radar of research and deep understanding (Hutchings et al. 2022). We are especially interested in work that examines Southern urban transitions, especially in non-metropolitan urban centers that often operate with a high degree of informality,  data-scarcity and limited formal local institutional capacity.

Transitions Underway

Globally, we are seeing a series of interlinked structural transitions at play in existing and emerging urban settlements, across multiple dimensions: demographic, economic, health, energy, information, education, lifestyles and consumption, ecosystems and environment. The pathways adopted by each of these transitions vary across contexts, geographies, and scales, and are influenced by several factors. The linkages between these transitions, too, vary depending on the larger environmental, socio-economic, and political context. The role of public and private actors in understanding, anticipating, and responding to these transitions is essential. The ability to manage these in the context of rapid urbanisation and harness synergies across these will determine the outcome of sustainable development globally (Mahendra et al,. 2021). This highlights the need for more research on the ongoing transitions at play within existing and emerging urban regions.

Shifts in populations and their characteristics that constitute the demographic transitions underway globally, are perhaps among the most visible shifts taking place and have implications for how all other related transitions play out. While global population is expected to peak this century, demographic pathways differ across nations (UNDESA, 2024). Countries such as China have already witnessed a population peak and are expected to see a population decline this century. Much of the rest of the global South continues to experience population growth, with some regions witnessing an incremental increase. Some parts of Africa are projected to double their populations by 2050. While this presents an opportunity for a potential demographic dividend, it could also add additional pressure on resources, urban and economic infrastructure, and further exacerbate socio-economic disparities and environmental challenges, in absence of sound policies (Chauhan & Arokiaswamy, 2018; Kundu, 2011).

These shifts are accompanied by economic transitions. In the global South, urban unemployment is closely linked to agrarian productivity and residual unemployment. The manufacturing sector at large has been undergoing a shift in priorities and geographies, with scope for reimagination of the sector (Rajan & Lamba, 2023). Technological innovations such as digitisation and artificial intelligence are reshaping the nature of work in the services sector and have the potential to further catalyze economic growth as they backward integrate into the secondary and primary sectors. The burgeoning ‘gig economy’ and its fleet of informal migrant workers is one example of a digitally-induced economic transition. In the absence of regulation and safety nets, economic vulnerability, too, is seeing shifts, fueled by climate-induced migration (Surie & Sharma, 2019). While cities of the global South compete for big capital, especially from the Information Technology and related sectors, emerging urban centers are also trying to attract capital. These shifts are reflected in governance, master planning, and city-making processes (Mitra, 2013; Kandpal et al. 2019).

Changing healthcare needs of the global South is closely linked to the demographic transition. While our public health systems have for long focused on communicable diseases, demographic shifts imply an additional burden of non-communicable and chronic diseases (Yadav & Arokiasamy, 2014). Environmental factors and the climate crises further add to public health exigencies. While the transition presents an opportunity for structural reforms, innovations, and rethinking provision of healthcare, it has a disproportionate impact on the vulnerable, especially those living with poor health services in dense urban informal settlements.

A key transition occurring globally is the clean energy transition. The ongoing discourse around the need for a just and equitable energy transition indicates the importance of a larger social, economic, and  political inquiry,  along with infrastructural and technological  shifts (Haldar et al. 2023). This is particularly important in the context of the global South, where the shift to clean energy is more complex due to socio-economic factors (Kumar et al., 2021).

Questions of equity and capabilities also arise while studying the infrastructural transitions in the urban. The built environment and affiliated services play a crucial role in shaping the nature and scale of urban centres. Physical and social infrastructural needs are intricately linked to all other ongoing transitions, and if unmet, could significantly alter pathways to achieving sustainable development goals.

Technological innovations have also had far reaching impacts on several other sectors such as finance, commerce, education, health, and communication. Transitions in the field of information and communication through robust telecom and internet infrastructures have made more extensive connectivity and deeper financial access possible. Use of technology in commerce has enabled creation of new markets and deepened existing ones. Urban economy and trade have benefitted from developments in modes of payment and management. The transition to digital forms of governance and service delivery aims to bring technology to everyday governance. Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence will further catalyze innovations in these fields. These advancements raise questions around the digital divide, equitable access, risks, and building capacities, which remain crucial to enabling inclusion in the face of a rush to scale solutions (Bansal et al. 2023; Jaiswal et al. 2021; Ismagilova et al., 2022).

In the socio-cultural context, cities are sites for new opportunities but also growing disparities, shaped by forms of identities such as caste, religion, ethnicity, race and gender. This transition is often reflected through visual and audio representation, where the ‘gaze’ of the planner, regulator or even researcher, plays an important role in how the city is perceived and communicated.

A Call to Explore and Reflect

Urban ARC 2025 aims to explore urban transitions from various perspectives, methodologies, and disciplines by creating a space for dialogue and exchange of knowledge on urban issues. It does this

to further understand the dynamics of the cities of the global South, especially smaller towns and peri-urban regions, through a study of ongoing transitions and their intersections with each other. This inquiry would also require newer ways of seeing and analyzing, by including spatial, literary, visual and many more tools and formats. The conference seeks to foster collaboration, discussion and exchange among researchers and practitioners working on these urban processes. It invites researchers and practitioners into a space that allows for reflection on their practice(s), against the background of economic, environmental, socio-cultural, technological, political and historical urban transitions, using diverse modes of engagement, in ideation, method, history, investigation and implementation.

The conference encourages the bringing together an assortment of methods, questions asked, geographies covered, disciplines explored, and outcomes reached. We welcome panel as well as paper submissions covering several sectors (e.g. environment and sustainability, planning and policy, among others), disciplines (e.g. social sciences, climate sciences, humanities, economics, architecture, planning) and methods (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods), using the lens of research, academia, policy and practice. We invite work that looks at both contemporary and historical ways of studying urban transitions.

Dates and Procedures

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

1. Word limit: 1000-2500 words

1. Full paper title, author(s) name and institutional affiliation should be included.
2. Complete end-text and in-text referencing in APA format.
3. All tables/images/graphs/figures should be numbered, have a title and have sources mentioned below them. Images obtained from an online source need to be open source/CC licensed with proper attributions.
4. Font: Open Sans; Font size: 11; Margin size: 1-inch

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

Location

Urban ARC 2025 will be in hybrid format, online on Zoom, and in person at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements’ Bengaluru City Campus (BCC), 2nd Main Road, Sadashivanagar, Bengaluru – 560 080.

Copyright

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

References

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