Remaking Cities
The 14th Urban History Planning History (UHPH) Conference
RMIT University, Swanston Academic Building, Melbourne

The 14th Urban History Planning History (UHPH) conference will be held in Melbourne in 2018, and the conference theme is inspired by Melbourne as an exemplar of cities that are continually re-made: as a centre of manufacturing, as a city built on land and infrastructure speculation, and as a place that has been re-made over the long-established land-based practices of the Kulin nation.

Manufacturing was central to the social, spatial and economic development of Australasia’s nineteenth-century cities. The decline of manufacturing has had a significant effect on urban environments and urban lives, as has the rise of the financial, service and cultural sectors. In the post-manufacturing era, cities have had to again reinvent themselves in response to the challenges of new internal circumstances and of external forces of change.

Underpinning the making and re-making of Melbourne and other Australasian cities are the processes of settler colonialism and speculation on stolen Indigenous lands. The long shadow cast by colonization challenges us to imagine how cities can be re-made in a just and shared future, and the role of planning within this.

We invite papers that address the theme of re-making cities in the broad senses sketched above: the making and re-making of manufacturing and post-manufacturing cities; infrastructure and institutions; cultural heritage; indigenous identity; plans and planning; community; and urban environments.

We also welcome papers on any historical aspect of Australasian urbanism.

If interested, please put the dates in your calendar.

Further details and calls for papers to be circulated shortly.