Conference Agenda

In recent years urban scholarship has framed cities, particularly in the ‘global south’, in contrasting ways overlooking some of the more grounded realities in these cities. On one hand scholars have viewed the Third World city as a site of unprecedented extraction, subjugation and marginalisation (Lees, Shin and López Morales, 2016; Roy 2009; Watson 2014). This view asserts that cities in the global south have become the sites of accumulation of global capital flows through the dispossession of a majority of its residents (Anjaria and McFarlane 2011; Bayat, 2012; Harvey, 2010; Varley 2013). Another perspective however, views the same urban centres to enable productive reconfigurations of space, politics, economy and social relations . In other words, this view holds that majority of urban residents albeit in situations of marginalisation are resilient and agents of productive change. Both these views however view marginality as urban exceptions that need to be remedied. Both these views perpetuate Euro-centric gaze of urbanity and overlook the existent ontologies of city making. Drawing on more recent works, this paper focusing on the question of ‘how people live in the city’ to query the dominant practices of ‘housing’ that shape urban space and society (Banerjee, 2022; 2023). By dominant practices of ‘housing’, this paper first critically reflects housing developmentalism that often roll out through provision of certain kinds of welfare housing, establishment of (carceral) housing such as institutional shelters, and productions of exclusions (such as cut off dates). In doing so, the paper also counters the popular understanding of the Third World city where the ‘slum’ works a a metonym of its global representation. Focusing attention on the unhoused-inhabitation, i.e. practices of dwelling in urban spaces and built environments outside the formal structure of what is popularly known as a house, this paper offers two epistemologies about overlooked cityness. One it counters that conflation of house and home that has majorly crept into the hegemonic understanding of housing and two it counters western translations of ‘homelessness’ to govern and manage unhoused populations in the Third World city.

The concept of “left behindness” offers novel insights into the long-lasting debates on territorial inequalities by establishing a nexus between spatial marginalization and a feeling of neglect among the inhabitants (Lang and Görmar 2019; MacKinnon, Béal, and Leibert 2024). The predominant perspective among leading authors such as Rodriguez-Pose (Rodríguez-Pose 2018; 2020) or Dijkstra (Dijkstra, Poelman, and Rodríguez-Pose 2020), aligns this phenomenon with the voting patterns of right-wing populist, anti-establishment parties and situates these primarily in areas designated as rural or post-industrial.

We argue that the concept exhibits deficiencies at this nexus, as it goes hand in hand with a dichotomous understanding of urban prosperity and rural/post-industrial decline. This produces a “blind spot” concerning territorial inequality, detaching the discussion from similar dynamics unfolding in prosperous metropolitan centres, where neighbourhoods with high concentrations of low-income, migrant, and racialized populations also endure economic stagnation and underinvestment (Nijman and Wei 2020). Taking electoral results as a point of departure as well as equalizing territorial neglect and the feeling of discontent with a specific voting behaviour is simplifying complex narratives and everyday struggles of residents in deprived areas. It risks obscuring the intricacies of positionalities as well as the multi-faced strategies employed by individuals in these areas. Moreover, it may perpetuate the framing of inequality by right-wing populist parties, disregarding the experiences of migrants and racialized communities who encounter similar challenges and are additionally confronted with stigmatization, being portrayed as "the problem," or made invisible (Bhambra 2017; Isakjee and Lorne 2019).

This paper proposes an intersectional ethnographic approach to enhance the concept by including the thus understudied realities of migrant and racialized residents in so called “left behind places”. Building on the insights from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the (post-)industrial town of Ternitz, Austria, it showcases differing effects of territorial inequality as well as the different forms of narratives and coping strategies employed by residents. We argue that an intersectional perspective on so called “left behind places”, is key to deepening the understanding of territorial inequality and promoting a holistic approach towards spatial justice (Barbieri et al. 2019).

Literature

Barbieri, Giovanni A., Federico Benassi, Marianna Mantuano, and M. Rosaria Prisco. 2019. ‘In Search of Spatial Justice. Towards a Conceptual and Operative Framework for the Analysis of Inter‐ and Intra‐urban Inequalities Using a Geo‐demographic Approach. The Case of Italy’. Regional Science Policy & Practice 11 (1): 109–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/rsp3.12158.

Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2017. ‘Brexit, Trump, and “Methodological Whiteness”: On the Misrecognition of Race and Class’. The British Journal of Sociology 68 (S1): S214–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12317.

Dijkstra, Lewis, Hugo Poelman, and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose. 2020. ‘The Geography of EU Discontent’. Regional Studies 54 (6): 737–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2019.1654603.

Isakjee, Arshad, and Colin Lorne. 2019. ‘Bad News from Nowhere: Race, Class and the “Left Behind”’. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37 (1): 7–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X18811923b.

Lang, Thilo, and Franziska Görmar, eds. 2019. Regional and Local Development in Times of Polarisation: Re-Thinking Spatial Policies in Europe. Singapore: Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1190-1.

MacKinnon, Danny, Vincent Béal, and Tim Leibert. 2024. ‘Rethinking “Left-behind” Places in a Context of Rising Spatial Inequalities and Political Discontent’. Regional Studies 58 (6): 1161–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2023.2291581.

Nijman, Jan, and Yehua Dennis Wei. 2020. ‘Urban Inequalities in the 21st Century Economy’. Applied Geography 117 (April):102188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2020.102188.

Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés. 2018. ‘The Revenge of the Places That Don’t Matter (and What to Do about It)’. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 11 (1): 189–209. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsx024.

———. 2020. ‘The Rise of Populism and the Revenge of the Places That Don’t Matter’. LSE Public Policy Review 1 (1): 4. https://doi.org/10.31389/lseppr.4.

Like other post-Soviet urban spaces, Armenian cities were once shaped by Soviet industrial logic. The design of industrial infrastructures, housing, public spaces, and other public and functional areas reflected the socialist organization of industry and society. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia's once-powerful industrial system fell apart, leaving these cities exposed to new forces and power struggles. Elites—including oligarchs and criminal groups—compete for control, while ordinary citizens remain on the margins, grappling with the ruins of their former industrial past and struggling to survive in an uncertain future. In this contested urban landscape, the remnants of Soviet-era industrial glory remain—crumbling, long-abandoned skeletons of factories and infrastructure. Public spaces, once central to communal life, have been privatized and repurposed for narrow, commercial interests, while the streets, courtyards, and squares of the past have been swallowed by the uninspired architecture of profit-driven ventures. Nostalgic voids interrupt the modern cityscape, creating a stark contrast between what was and what is.

The ordinary citizen finds themselves alienated amid the weakening of central authority. Left with little choice, they assume responsibility for their survival, sometimes joining the struggle for resources and influence on their level. The citizen also becomes a participant in reshaping the city, contributing to a new, complex power dynamic that defines this post-Soviet urban reality. Armenian towns have become arenas of both conflict and indifference between three key players: the ordinary citizen, the new power elites, and the state. Through their interactions, a new urban morphology has emerged—a layered, often conflicted, subordination of spaces, each acquiring new meanings and functions.

We seek to explore the transformative biography of Armenia’s small industrial towns, examining how their urban forms and functions have been redefined in the post-Soviet era. By analyzing the biography of Armenian towns we aim to shed light on the actors’ cognitive and behavioural practices of legitimation of new morphologies and the reinterpretation of spaces and their spatial subordination.

In the Dutch and European context, intermediate cities could be considered examples of ‘overlooked urbanities’. The Netherlands is a country with only few large cities, but many intermediate cities. These cities are modest in terms of population, economy and available services, but they have a vital importance as regional centres and intermediaries between metropolitan areas and less urbanized parts of the country. In the coming decades they will also play a key role in solving the Dutch housing shortage. Still, such cities lack the research attention they would deserve from urban studies scholars, and they have to struggle for acknowledgement in national urban and regional development policies.

Recently and in the coming years, many of these intermediate cities have developed or are developing large-scale urban transformation projects. Typical locations of such projects are former industrial and business areas and railway zones adjacent to historic inner cities. The scale and complexity of these projects, while meanwhile quite common in large cities, are unprecedented in intermediate cities, and may fundamentally change these cities in many ways. This results in debates and controversies about the shapes and dimensions of these projects (e.g. densification, verticality) and whether such developments fit well enough in an intermediate city context.

Alkmaar is an intermediate city in which a large-scale urban redevelopment project is currently being developed. Alkmaar is a central city in its own city-region, while being situated in the ‘agglomeration shadow’ of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area at the same time. The city is being crossed by the Noordhollands Kanaal, constructed in the 19^th century to connect Amsterdam with the North Sea. Until the 1960s, the canal was at the city edge and featured a mix of farms, factories and typical urban fringe activities. Meanwhile, though, it is in the middle of the city instead. First plans to redevelop parts of the canal waterfront were developed in the 1990s and 2000s, but a comprehensive redevelopment vision and strategy was developed more recently. The ‘Alkmaars Kanaal’ plan should result in several mixed-use residential, business and leisure areas along the canal, including 15,000 new dwellings for about 30,000 people. This paper will discuss: how and why this plan emerged; how it has been received and discussed in local society; how it has developed and changed in response to societal and political changes and unforeseen obstacles along the way; and to what extent its high ambition level can be realized.