GPR2C is excited to be participating in the Feminist Exploration of Urban Futures International Conference, organised by the research project Urbanization, gender, and the global south: A transformative knowledge network (GenUrb), September 26-28, York univeristy, Toronto

Gender equality – material, social, civic – is fundamental to a Right to the City. This conference drives at the heart of this contemporary urban problem, and we hope that the exchange of ideas will move efforts in this arena forwards.

With social reproduction in crisis and people increasingly making a living outside the wage, the urban is being reshaped in ways that are no longer captured in twentieth-century conceptualizations of urbanization. In those countries labeled the ‘global south’ urbanization, driven both by natural increase and rural to urban migration, is where over 90 percent of urban growth (between 2000 – 2050) is expected to occur. Our aim in this conference is to explore how feminist scholars, activists, and policymakers understand the gendered nature of urbanization, women’s place-making strategies, and to rethink the urban from the perspective of “the global south,” not least comparatively and relationally.

Through a series of roundtable, panels, workshop, and research paper sessions the ‘Feminist Explorations of Urban Futures’ conference will create a global dialogue on the following themes: comparative feminist research, critical policy dialogues on gender and the urban, feminist activism and the city, and social reproduction and women’s place-making in cities. The conference will bring together leading feminist urban scholars, shapers of urban policy, activists working on gender and the urban at various scales, as well as new and emerging scholars working on feminist approaches to the urban.

Programme

The provisional programme for the Feminist Exploration of Urban Futures International Conference can be found here: https://genurb.apps01.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FEUF-Preliminary-Program-.pdf.

Key highlights include:

THURSDAY 26 SEPTEMBER

09:30 – 11:00 – Declolonizing the Urban in a Time of Neoclonialism, ft. Lorena Zarate (HIC President)

1:30-3:00 – Right to the City Workshop

FRIDAY 27 September GenUrb Roundtable on Gender within UN-Habitat and the Gender Hub Initiative, ft. Lorena Zarate, Ana Falu

SATURDAY 28 September 12:00 – 1:30 – Urban Risk and the Right to the City

More information on the conference, as well as information on how to apply, can be found here