Following the success of our 2010 conference at the University of California, Los Angeles the 2011 Spaces and Flows Conference will take place in Prato, Italy.  Prato is located in the Tuscany region of Italy, a short train ride from Florence and close to the Florence airport. Prato has yet to be transformed by mass tourism, even though it is in a beautifully preserved Italian Renaissance city. Historically home to a thriving textile industry, Prato has seen an influx of immigrant workers in the last 20 years.  This juxtaposition of the local-historical with the global-hypermodern makes Prato an excellent location to discuss human spatial conditions in global flows.  

This conference aims to critically engage contemporary spatial, social, ideological, and political transformations in a transitional world. In a process-oriented world of movement, the global north and global south now simultaneously converge and diverge in a dialectic that shapes and transforms cities, suburbs , and rural areas. This conference addresses the nature and mapping of these forces and the dynamics that propel these changes. The conference also examines and defines the myriad of different spaces that make up our contemporary world, including urban, edgeurban, de-urban, micro-urban, greenfield, and off-the-grid.

In addition to plenary presentations, the Spaces and Flows Conference includes parallel presentations by practitioners, teachers, and researchers. We invite you to respond to the conference Call-for-Papers. Presenters may submit their written papers for publication in the peer reviewed 'Spaces and Flows: An International Journal on Urban and Extraurban Studies'. If you are unable to attend the conference in person virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for referring and possible publication. You also have the ability to upload your presentation to the Space and Flows YouTube playlist. Please sign up for our monthly newsletter http://spacesandflows.com/ideas/newsletter, and join us on Facebook and Twitter.

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 17 February 2011. Future deadlines will be announced on the conference website after this date. Proposals are reviewed within two weeks of submission. Full details of the conference, including an online proposal submission form, may be found at the conference website: http://spacesandflows.com/conference-2011/ .

We look forward to receiving your proposal and hope you will be able to join us in Prato in November.

Yours Sincerely,

Prof. David Wilson
Department of Geography
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

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