2024 Joint ANZRSAI/RSA Conference

Session Organiser(s)
Jacques Poot, University of Waikato, New Zealand

In many regions today, net migration has become the primary contributor to population change, overshadowing natural increase. While changes in natural increase tend to be relatively gradual, net migration often fluctuates significantly. In some regions, net international migration dominates net internal migration, while the reverse is true in others. However, net migration is the difference between in-migration and out-migration flows, each of which may be driven by different factors. Given the importance of migration in assessing current regional population changes, analysts and policymakers require a comprehensive understanding of the full gross migration matrix, which details regional migration by both origin and destination. Such a “from/to” migration matrix should also include a row for “abroad” as an origin of migrants (immigrants) and a column for “abroad” as a destination of migrants (emigrants). This special session welcomes papers focusing on the analysis of migration at the regional level. A range of spatial scales can be considered. Methodological developments and applications for forecasting or projecting regional migration are of particular interest. In addition to case studies from Australia and New Zealand, international comparative studies can also provide valuable insights.

If you would like to submit your abstract to this session please choose the gateway theme on the submission page.

Session Organiser(s)
Lynette Washington, University of South Australia, Australia
Emma Ormerod, Newcastle University, UK

Place-based leadership (PBL) studies has drawn on more ‘traditional’ leadership models, but importantly breaks from these to emphasise agency,  collaboration, networking, transformation and connectivity. Coming largely out of work within the Regional Studies Association, such research has been significant in understanding the development (and divergence) of places: who is leading, in what ways, and how this shapes local and regional place-making. There has been some recognition that place leadership works best when leaders are representative of (and attached to) their communities, and crises are best managed when leaders draw on the diverse perspectives and abilities of all members of the community. However, whilst the study of place leadership is now relatively mature, scholars have paid scant attention to issues of diversity and inclusion (Sotarauta and Beer, 2021; Ormerod, 2023).  Drawing on feminist and decolonial scholarship, some scholars in critical leadership studies have paid closer attention to intersectional inequalities in leadership, and troubled the foundations of leadership models and thinking as having been built on narrow selection of leaders: white, heterosexual males (Klenke, 2017; Liu, 2021). What can this (and other diverse) thinking bring to place based leadership? How can more attention be paid to power relations and systems of oppression across different forms of place leadership? In this Special Session we welcome submissions that consider the ways in which alternative thinking in place leadership can be used to include diversity and to overcome the disadvantage of places themselves, and the people who live in those places.

If you would like to submit your abstract to this session please choose the gateway theme on the submission page.

Session Organiser(s)
Kyle Pierre Israel, University of Philippines Los Banos, Philippines
Mohsen Mohammedzadeh, University of Aukland, New Zealand
Anne Taufen, University of Washington Tacoma, USA

Responding to global conditions that place shoreline districts, their design, community use, industrial development, and regional accessibility at the forefront of civic challenges – this session invites a focus on the role and significance of data sovereignty in the place-based governance and development of coastal port regions.

When scholars at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government describe “the intersection of government and data” as crucial to “preemptively address civic problems” (Goldsmith and Louisy 2023), they highlight an important reality in the use, accessibility, and potential of place-based data to drive a variety of decision processes in urban port districts. The political implications of data sovereignty (Stokols 2023) and the planning significance of supply chain logistics (Charters-Gabanek et al 2024) are among the ways that data platforms impact regional sustainability. As distributional hubs of material security and humanitarian aid, data is used to represent global spaces of survival and justice at the marine/terrestrial interface of economic supply chains and international, global flows.

Whether through environmental conditions (sea level, canal levels, extreme weather events, natural disaster) or through political upheaval (military occupation, naval aggression, targeted airstrikes, disabling of energy and logistics) – the social ecology of modern maritime port districts as centers of urban trade is complex, fragile, and essential to vast populations of urban residents in metropolitan regions.

We invite contributions that consider, include, and respond to at least one of the following questions, building on established collaboration between APRU-SCL hub working groups and responding to SDG 11 (safe human settlements), SDG 2 (food security), and SDG 3 (health and wellbeing), and using specific forms of data to ask and answer:

• What are the infrastructural components of adaptive port district agglomerations and arrangements, and how do physical design and spatial configuration support equitable access to needed goods, services, and relief aid, throughout a metropolitan region?
• How do institutional mechanisms guide and co-produce the port district as a site of sustainability, resilience, and justice, and what key elements enable protection and health of regional populations?
• What social-ecological outcomes are produced by the disposition and design of port districts as logistical hubs, and how can human rights and environmental conditions be protected despite political unrest or natural disaster?

Contributions that invite additional questions and related interventions are welcome: e.g. data-driven representations of dynamic labor, food, water, energy, waste, and technology systems, focused on the global port district as a site of co-production. The concept of sovereignty intentionally engages the rights, standing, and knowledge claims of indigenous tribal nations. Authors who can do so are invited to ask: are tribal data sources being assembled, protected, and utilized in consensual and mutually beneficial ways? Do settler-colonial regimes acknowledge and respect the presence of tribal claims, in the representation of port districts, the proliferation of place-based data, and its use?

If you would like to submit your abstract to this session please choose the gateway theme on the submission page.

Charters-Gabanek, K., Raimbault, N., & Hall, P. V. (2024). Logistics and Urban Planning: A Review of Literature. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X241247838
Goldsmith, S., & Louisy, K. (2023). A Framework for Reducing Place-Based Inequity. Data-Smart City Solutions Papers. https://datasmart.hks.harvard.edu/framework-reducing-place-based-inequity
Stokols, A. (2023). The insurgent smart city: How a social movement created an alternative imaginary of the smart city. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2023.2216887

Session Organiser(s)
Abigail Gilmore, University of Manchester, UK
Thuy Tran, University of Melbourne, Australia and University of Manchester, UK
Claire Burnill-Maier, University of Manchester, UK

This session is concerned with models for arts and culture-led development that move beyond the ‘creative city’ strategies for economic development. Characterised by urban entrepreneurialism and often accompanied by gentrification and the displacement of Indigenous, precarious creative communities, such strategies do not work for places that lack the land value viability or necessary capacity to compete for investment, extending inequalities within and between regions. However, a recent return to cultural planning and thinking infrastructurally within city and regional policy, along with the increasing acknowledgement of how policies can be adapted and translated (Tran, 2023) within divergent spatial, political and economic contexts, suggested that other possibilities exist. The session, therefore, welcomes papers with both empirical work on and reconceptualization of past and present cases that further understanding of culture as infrastructure (O’Connor, 2024), which ‘enables’ other goods and services, not just for use or exchange value but for the common public good (Kazynska, 2024).

If you would like to submit your abstract to this session please choose the gateway theme on the submission page.