Global Crisis and Critical Urban Theory

Urban reality has changed so much in recent decades that it has become almost unrecognisable. Transformations are certainly overwhelming: the explosive growth of peripheral megacities, the changes in big cities that are increasingly dispersed without specifiable limits, the forms of management and planning focused on growth and competitiveness and the progressive turning away from regulation and relief of socio-spatial inequalities. Major changes that intermingle with the necessary attention to the effects of the global economic recession and a state of growing social unrest.

This seminar aims to focus debate on the great challenges facing urban theory at present: the expansion of urbanisation, the multi-scale centre-periphery dialectic and the emergence of urban social movements. At the same time, it also aims to become aware and to question, when necessary, the role of the Anglo-American hegemony in the theoretical definition of the major themes of reflection.

Organised by Espais Crítics

In collaboration with: Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca; Universitat de Barcelona; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Universitat Oberta de Catalunya; Icaria Editorial