Call for Papers : Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 2014, April 8-12, Tampa, Florida : "Land Use Conflicts at the Intersection of the Urban and Rural"

Session Organizers: Gerda Wekerle and Donald Leffers

 Land use changes at the rural-urban intersection are political processes often accompanied by contestation over competing visions of how lands should be used. Conflicts arise when proposed new development conflicts with the conservation of green space, natural amenities and farmland. The siting of infrastructure projects -- wind farms, pipelines, energy projects and rural resource uses -- can also be understood more broadly as contestations over the transformation of land use.

Shifts in governance, the role of the state and citizens, and competing constructions of space, place and nature bring conflicts to the fore. Developers, bureaucrats, politicians, and planners play key roles in framing and attempting to manage and resolve these conflicts. Increasing attention is being paid to development, property, and property developers. Citizen activists, rural movements, and environmental coalitions challenge proposals for land use change to rural areas on the periphery of cities. Competing discursive strategies vie to shape the form and content of policies. In some places, this has resulted in alternative and innovative policy processes and policy implementation.

We welcome papers that aim to develop a broader understanding and critical reflection that connect site-specific or sectoral case study to the cross-cutting theoretical and policy frameworks that emerge from land use conflicts in the rural-urban periphery. We hope to facilitate conversations across sectors and sites. We encourage participants from a range of theoretical perspectives.

Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:

·      Conflicts at the confluence of the urban and rural, including challenges to the planning of housing development projects, sprawl and loss of farmland;
·      Politics of planning and governance in peri-urban land use conflicts;
·      Developers and the development industry in conflicts over peri-urban land use change;
·      Negotiation of property, property rights, and the law;
·      First Nations’ land claims;
·      Land grabs: 'accumulation by dispossession' in peri-urban areas;
·      Social constructions of land and nature in land use conflicts;
·      Natural resource use conflicts, including mining, aggregates, forests, and water;
·      Social and environmental movements and land-use conflict
·      Siting conflicts such as pipelines, sewers, roads, waste dumps, electricity generating facilities, and alternative energy such as wind and solar farms;
·      Institutional actors and land use conflicts;
·      Policy and legislative approaches to managing conflicts


Please submit a 250 word abstract by November 25, 2013 to Gerda Wekerle (gwekerle@yorku.ca), Faculty of Environmental Studies, and Donald Leffers (dleffers@yorku.ca), Department of Geography, York University, Toronto, Canada. Please send us your PIN number received upon registering for the AAG conference.