Motivated by the actual and anticipated occurrence of weather related extreme events, a plethora of actors in urban areas are organizing and participating in planning and design efforts–as well as concrete action–aimed at increasing urban resilience and adapting to climatic change. These efforts focus on post-disaster recovery as well as on minimizing economic losses, deaths, and other negative impacts of future severe storms, flooding, and heat waves. In this session, we seek to interrogate the political ecology of extreme weather events in urban settings and of the plans, actions, and strategies dealing with them: What are the political ecologies that produce uneven vulnerability to severe storms, flooding, and heat waves across communities? What kinds of political work go into the creation and completion of these plans, actions, and strategies and what kinds of political work do they perform?
Paper topics might include, but are not limited to:
- How power and inequality informs whether and how urban communities are sustained amidst severe storms, flooding, drought, and heat waves;
- How power and inequality informs and is refashioned through adaptation and resilience plans, actions, and strategies;
- How power and inequality shapes processes of science and activism around severe storms, flooding, drought, and heat waves in urban settings
We are open to theoretical and empirical papers that seek to contribute to a better understanding of the politics of urban resilience to extreme weather events through description, exploration, and theorization.
If you are interested in participating, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to Katinka Wijsman (Katinka.wijsman@newschool.edu) by November 27, 2017. Accepted papers will be notified by November 29 to ensure participants can register by the December 1 deadline.
Tags: CFPs 2018, weather, climate, resilience, inequality