APPROACHING THE "CITY": ALTERNATIVE URBAN STUDIES
15th & 16th January 2004

Keynote speakers: John Urry (Lancaster), Harvey Molotch (NYU) and Nigel Thrift (Bristol)

The 'city' has long been the object of analysis across disciplines. Scholars have competed to provide a theory of the city, to define the urban, to chart the historical emergence of cities, to diagnose their character and explain their effects upon subjects. Recent emphasis on the 'global city' and the 'information city' have drawn our attention to issues of consumption, spectacle, mobility and virtuality and allowed us to imagine new ways in which the city might be approached and grasped analytically. However, our inquiries still seem constrained by the a priori identification of the 'city' as something to study, to sense and know.

This international conference seeks to rethink our approaches to the 'city', to explore the category's status as artefact and the possibilities of not taking it for granted. Contributors are invited from across disciplines (sociology, geography, anthropology, literary criticism, cultural studies, architecture, history) and encouraged to take risks. Discussion will centre on experimental analyses and research methodologies, and on the kinds of knowledge we wish to produce. Is a general theory of the city desirable? What does it mean to have an urban theory? Should our knowledge be a means of navigating or sensing place (like the 'London Knowledge' of cabbies)? Is there any mileage in the act of comparison, and if so, what? How can that knowledge be displayed (apart from the standard academic text)?

The conference also marks the conclusion of a three year research project at INCITE. Entitled Urban Mobilities, its brief was to examine the relationship between mobility and experiences of place in London, with particular reference to the use of new media technologies and digital content. The project was made possible by a donation from Intel Research Council to the Department of Sociology.

Papers and other forms of presentation addressed one or more of the following topics:
- Ethnography of the city (as opposed to ethnography in the city)
- Urban knowing: popular and professional cultures of urban knowledge-making
- Virtual city: cyberspace and urban imaginations (gaming, online journalism, online communities)
- Mapping: the city as map, the map as city
- Literature and art: urbanscapes and perception.
- Mobilities: the city in circulation and moving to 'see' the city.