Title: Just urban space in the socio-ecological transition.
Chair:
Dr. Marco Ingrassia
Department of Architecture
University of Palermo, Italy
Abstract/Description:
Contemporary cities are shaped by processes in which climatic, social, and economic crises affect territories and urban populations in differentiated ways, building upon pre-existing conditions of social, spatial, and environmental inequality. In this context, plans and policies oriented toward urban regeneration and the socio-ecological transition intervene in deeply differentiated urban settings, producing non-uniform outcomes across space.
The perspective of socio-spatial and environmental justice makes it possible to interpret these transformations as complex and relational processes, in which the distribution of benefits and costs, conditions of access, forms of participation, and differentiated perceptions are closely intertwined. Within this framework, the critical dimensions of spatial plans, policies, and practices do not emerge only through openly exclusionary outcomes-widely discussed in the literature – for instance in debates on green gentrification – but also through interventions that, while presented as inclusive or sustainable, operate in partial and sectoral ways. Plans that fail to integrate social and ecological dimensions, or green and mobility policies that overlook the social and spatial conditions of access, as well as bottom-up or subsidiary practices that are not representative or unable to engage with urban complexity, may produce implicit exclusions and processes of marginalization. These dynamics point to the need for a critical use of both quantitative and qualitative tools, as well as for a reflexive attention to disciplinary practices and procedural frameworks through which policies and interventions are defined, implemented, and evaluated. In this sense, data-driven tools, digital platforms, and emerging urban technologies are not neutral instruments, but actively shape what becomes visible, measurable, governable, and contestable in the socio-ecological transition.
It is within this context that urban space assumes a central role. It constitutes the primary arena for the implementation of environmental and social sustainability policies – from urban green infrastructure to active mobility, from regeneration initiatives to shared management practices – while simultaneously serving as the context in which the differentiated effects, partialities, and tensions of such interventions become visible, experienced, and contested. From this perspective, urban space is not merely an object of intervention, but a critical device through which the justice of the urban socio-ecological transition can be examined.
This call opens a space for critical dialogue on how urban space is conceived, transformed, and inhabited within processes of socio-ecological transition, and on which theoretical approaches, practices, and analytical tools are capable of grasping its complexity, tensions, and implications in terms of equity and justice. Contributions addressing one or more of the following themes are welcome:
- public space and just socio-ecological transition: theoretical and interpretative perspectives
- urban sustainability plans and policies: approaches, tools, and effects on urban space
- participatory processes and community-based practices in urban space
- conflicts, negotiations, and tensions related to transition-oriented interventions
- access, inclusion, and exclusion in urban space
- everyday uses, practices, and perceptions of urban space
- critical and/or participatory cartographies, GIS, and spatial analysis tools
- critical methods and analytical tools for reading socio-ecological urban complexitY
- digital technologies, data infrastructures, and socio-technical dispositifs in the socio-ecological transition: governance, access, visibility, and inequalities