CfP, INTERDISCIPLINARY WORLD CONGRESS OF URBAN STUDIES: URBAN POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESS 25 – 26 AUGUST 2022 Hybrid Event

It is a great pleasure to invite you to the hybrid Interdisciplinary World Congress of Urban Studies 2022, which will be held from 25-26 August in Istanbul and on-line. The hybrid format allows participants to attend from all around the globe, but we would also like to express our wish to have as many participants as possible with us personally in Istanbul. Congress will be conducted both in Turkish and English. Abstracts in both languages will be accepted.

Developments experienced during and after the Industrial Revolution where societies started to improve their economies changed the appearance and semantic dimension of poverty. Old poverty, which was a livable and acceptable situation, disappeared with the arrival of new poverty, and misery and hunger took its place. Disintegration and rupture, which were not seen in old social segments, have become more apparent with the presence of modern poverty. Additionally, the poor who experienced income insufficiency were not able to afford what the market has charged them. Furthermore, because the market returned more profit from housing, the chance of finding a low-priced house has decreased. Basic structural foundations of the poor such as irregular work or unemployment, insufficient social benefits, inadequate income and being unable to afford the budget of high-priced housing have caused “homelessness.” Today, homelessness, for various reasons, has become widespread and is an acute issue. According to United Nations (UN) Reports, there are 100 million homeless people worldwide. As many as 1.6 billion people lacked adequate housing (Habitat, 2015). Homelessness emerged as an important social problem in the 1980s when individualism came into prominence and capitalism was handling all the institutions, especially in developed countries. The homelessness phenomenon identified within urban areas is a social problem that has drawn the attention of the social sciences more and more each day.

Ordinary cities are grappling with the impacts of the pandemic, natural-disaster risks and climate changes. The urban poor are the most adversely affected. Among them, especially low educated women, children, refugees, and discriminated minorities are seriously experiencing the burden in their everyday lives. Urban riots, protest movements and populist parties have called into question the capacity of Western urban areas to integrate new urban residents -especially new immigrants - and to give voice to those who have suffered most because of those recent crises. Although spatial inequalities across and within cities can also be found in cities of the Global North, it is the depth and breadth of such inequalities in the cities of the Global South that are of concern. The aim of this congress is indeed to discuss some of the emerging issues that cities, both in the Global North and in the Global South, confront during those exceptional times, with particular attention to the spread of poverty.

We welcome contributions from all disciplinary backgrounds, NGOs, policy makers, practitioners, and academics. We particularly encourage comparative and/or longitudinal perspectives addressing (among others) the following topics:

• Spatial dimensions of poverty,
• Poverty in urban and rural spaces,
• Homelessness (women, elderly, migrant, LBGTİ)
• Housing
• Migration and poverty,
• Poverty and spatial mobility
• Spatial planning and poverty,
• Privatization of public spaces,
• Spatial exclusion/inclusion and segregation, architecture and poverty,
• Theories of geographies of poverty and inequality,
• Poverty and environmental issues (access, perception, recognition),
• Energy, water, food poverty
• Joblessness
• Measurements of poverty and spatial context
• Mapping poverty

The conference is open to all disciplines (development studies, economics, geography, sociology, anthropology, social health, wellbeing, political science, law, psychology, history, international relations, and humanities and arts, and other cognate areas and sub-disciplines). Papers exploring the ethical and sustainability dimensions related to poverty are particularly welcomed.

Both research papers of empirical, theoretical or conceptual nature and policy papers are welcomed. If you have any questions regarding your submission, please contact us. All proposals will be reviewed.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is 12 August 2022.

Please use the submission form on the congress homepage: https://forms.gle/L7CCRj8HJtdgF5eE8

Istanbul Topkapı University

Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences

Tel: + 90-538-011 19 19

E-mail: iwcus@topkapi.edu.tr

Congress Website: https://bit.ly/3zhXbmg