ISA International Housing Conference

Submitted by Steve Rubin on March 27, 2009 - 13:49

Start: Sep 1 2009 00:00

End: Sep 4 2009 00:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT-2

Glasgow, United Kingdom

University of Glasgow

The University of Glasgow's Department of Urban Studies is delighted to announce that it will host the 2009 ISA RC43 Housing conference. This conference was last held in Toronto in 2004 and will take place from 1-4 September 2009.

Glasgow is an apposite and exciting location for such an event. The city and its surrounding region has been the locus of successive housing policy interventions in response to housing and neighbourhood deprivation, most recently through the largest stock transfer of its council housing to a housing association with a major reinvestment and neighbourhood change programme. Glasgow is Scotland's largest city and is at the heart of the policy and institutional transformation underway since the devolution of government to Scotland in 1999. The city-region has undergone major economic and social change in recent years and is presently undertaking a massive regeneration of its waterfront area. The region is a major tourist destination, close to the West Highlands, Loch Lomond, 40 miles from Edinburgh and is culturally rich in museums, the evening economy and the best retail outside of London in the UK.

The University is the fourth oldest in the UK, established in 1451, and is ranked in the top 100 Universities in the world. A broad-based civic University, Glasgow has taken a long-standing interest in housing and urban questions, supporting ESRC Research Centres in housing and urban studies, and, since 1996, a Department of Urban Studies. Apart from its international multi-disciplinary research and teaching profile, the Department has hosted several successful international conferences in its own right, including the European Network for Housing Research, the European Real Estate Society and in 2007 the European Urban and Regional Association.

The key theme of the conference is to engage with the current turbulence in the housing finance credit markets and ask what this means for housing outcomes, opportunities and policy-making at different spatial scales (the neighbourhood, city, nation and different international regions), both now and in the future. What does this mean for the role of housing within modern capitalist economies and societies? Does the sub-prime lending debacle and its repercussions imply that housing is now just another globalised commodity or does it in fact remain ineluctably local?

These and related questions will be addressed in plenary, panel and workshop sessions. Our goal is to provide a setting for inclusive, informed multidisciplinary and truly international academic exchange. The conference welcomes papers from all over the world and across the social sciences and will stream a series of thematic and disciplinary parallel sessions that will run throughout, as well as a doctoral session for research students.

There will be further regular announcements about the conference in months to come including a call for participation and papers in 2008. If you would like to learn more about the conference, the host Department or Glasgow: please contact the conference chair, Professor Kenneth Gibb, at the Department of Urban Studies ([email protected]).

For further information about the upcoming ISA Housing Conference, please see the following link:

http://www.gla.ac.uk/events/housing/