Home

Kristin Good, Dalhousie University, Kristin.Good@Dal.Ca
Peter Burns, Loyola University, New Orleans, pburns@loyno.edu

The theme of this year's conference, "Politics in Motion: Change and Complexity in the Contemporary Era," invites us to consider what is new in politics and how we ought to study highly complex, variable, and interdependent political environments. Furthermore, it asks us to reflect on how we might translate this knowledge into forms that practitioners can use to address contemporary public policy challenges. In other words, the theme calls on us to contemplate the fundamental question of where our discipline is heading.

We invite papers that consider what is new in urban and suburban politics, policy, and places and that explore these trends in ways that speak to the broader discipline and policy practitioners. As we move forward, we encourage participants to reflect upon what the most important contributions of our sub-field have been as well as what our sub-field might offer to the broader discipline in the future - theoretically, methodologically, and empirically. Are we seeing the emergence of new modes of politics in cities? And, if so, to what extent do these novel forms of political life reflect, cause, or foreshadow broader national and global trends? Or, alternatively, if they seem unique then why and what can we learn from them? Urban scholars have already begun to document important new forms of community organizing, sources of community mobilization, and the emergence of novel configurations of local and multi-level governance arrangements. Others, have explored how new patterns of social diversity influence the political life of cities. We look forward to papers that consider how these new modes of participation and social diversity affect city politics and policy.

We see the decision to hold the meeting in Canada, as a symbol of the comparative direction in which the discipline is moving. As such we particularly welcome papers that address these (and other) topics comparatively - through intra-city, inter-city, and cross-national comparisons. Case studies that are theory-driven and positioned within comparative frameworks are also welcome. Papers that address the question of the potential fruitfulness of United States-Canada comparisons would be of particular interest to this year's audience.