5th International Conference of the Research Network Private Urban Governance & Gated Communities

University of Chile, Santiago, Chile - March 30th to April 2nd 2009

Cities around the globe witness the development of new institutional settings which organize urban spaces - especially on a sub-communal scale. These new settings involve public and private organizations, different forms of community organizations as well as organizations which cut across the public/private dichotomy. Thus, in existing neighborhoods become established institutions like horizontal homeowner associations or business improvement districts. Newly urbanized areas are organized as private and often gated residential communities, as shopping centers or as business centers with one management entity.

The 5th conference of the research network on "private urban governance" will offer a highly international forum for the interdisciplinary discussion on the causes and consequences for the rise of these new forms of urban governance. The research network has been established in 1999 and is an open network of currently more than 100 researchers (urban geography, planning, architecture, regional economy, law, political science, sociology, anthropology etc.) from around the world.

The deadline for submitting the abstracts is 30 October 2008. Guidelines for abstract submission are available on the conference website: http://gated-communities.uchilefau.cl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=35

All abstracts should be proposed for a specific panel (see details on the conference website).

Panel 1: Private urban governance, social vulnerability and exclusion in transforming societies
Rainer Wehrhahn, Ximena Galleguillos and Claudia Rodriguez-Seeger

Panel 2: A trans/inter-disciplinary approaches to understanding and exploring private urban spaces and governance in cities
Sonia Roitman

Panel 3: Production and systemic impacts of suburban residential enclaves
Renaud Le Goix and Eric Charmes

Panel 4: Politics of Gated Community Residents
Katja Rohrbach

Panel 5: Gated Communities and Local Governments
Sonia Roitman

Panel 6: Gated Communities and the Role of Urban Design
Miao Xu and Christine Mady

Panel 7: Soft Urbanism - Modes of Policing the Private City
Henning Füller and Nadine Marquardt

Panel 8 : Business and Neighbourhood Improvement Districts: analysing the transnationalisation of an urban governance model
Georg Glasze, Elisabeth Peyroux and Robert Pütz

Panel 9 : *** THIS IS A CLOSED PANEL - IT IS NOT OPEN FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS***

‘Gated Communities’ in the Low Countries: A Delineation of the Concept and an Assessment of the Current Situation in the Netherlands and Belgium
David Hamers and Kersten Nabielek

Panel 10: Unlocking Affordable Housing Complexes in Latin America: A New Type of Gated Communities in Chile and Mexico
Cristina Inclan Valadez