Call for papers
This conference focuses on the interplay between cultural practices and the production of urban space and place-making that creates the living vernacular heritages of neighborhoods and communities of the city. Emphasis is given to community efforts and collective empowerment through heritage preservation practices that are found to enhance sustenance of the natural environment as well as resilience towards environmental threats. The attention given to the vitality of vernacular heritage for its own sake and in creating foundations for disaster resilience is an as yet understudied dimension of research on such contemporary issues as the right to the city and spatial justice. Papers on disaster risk reduction for monumental heritage preservation would also be welcomed as long as they discuss the role of ordinary people and communities in constructing their everyday lives in and around these monuments, through which the monuments become meaningful spaces for their everyday life-spaces.
Among the contemporary challenges to the resilience of cities in Asia are those that arise from the disarticulation of relationships among cultural heritage preservation, the production of the urban built environment, and the capacities of ordinary people to engage in city-making by and for themselves. Heritage discourses tend to focus on sites thought to be of World Heritage importance while paying little attention to the living heritages of neighborhoods, artisanal craft and art districts.
Deadline
31 July 2014
