Call for Papers
ISU Talks #03
Ruralism: The Future of Villages and
Small Towns in an Urbanizing World
18 Nov. 2015

The Institute for Sustainable Urbanism invites proposals for
papers for the third annual ISU Talks at Technische Universität
Braunschweig on 18 November 2015.
What role do villages and small towns have in a world in
which the majority lives in cities?
Rural space is about to change: After mechanization and industrialization,
rural space has experienced mass out-migration.
It has received waste and unwanted or out-dated infrastructures
from cities. It has fed the world’s population and
served as the scenery for movie plots or as a recreational
landscape for temporary guests. But in the near future, rural
space will step out of the shadow of the cities and become
appreciated as an important actor in sustainable development
in its own right.

In the current city-centred discourse, rural spaces are often
dismissed as declining or stagnating. However, rural spaces
also play a critical role in sustainable development, as an
inextricably linked counterpart, but also as a complement
to the growing city, as extraction sites, natural reservoirs or
leisure spaces. Yet, the city and the countryside are evermore
increasingly mutually reliant. A closer look at the countryside
unveils a set of dynamics overlaying and changing rural
space, beyond trends of depopulation and shutdown of public
facilities. The once remote and quiet countryside is now traversed
by global and regional flows of people, goods, waste,
energy and information, interrelating it with the larger urban
system, and perhaps even bringing it to the frontlines of regional
transformation and sustainability. A new set of criteria
for understanding and appreciating the rural is required.

The conference aims at the discussion of the above hypothesis
and proposes the following questions: How and with what
human consequences are rural spaces being urbanized to
day? What are the existing and potential connections between
urban and rural spaces? What new concepts for rural living
are there? Do we need to formulate a (new) vision for ‘ruralism’?
And what role can urban design play in preparing rural
life and space for the future?

Researchers from all disciplines, including, but not limited to,
urban and landscape planning, architecture, geography, arts,
film, social and cultural sciences, are encouraged to submit
paper proposals on the following topics:
- Rural planning (building, settlement and landscape
structures, public and private uses, interconnectedness,
flows of goods and supplies, etc.)
- Productive potentials in rural space (food, renewable
energies, technology, tourism, cultural production,
nature and ecology, etc.)
- Village culture and rural life (building culture,
landscape, aesthetic representations, identity, participation,
lifestyles, etc.)
- Regional development concepts (International Building
Exhibitions, Regionalen, Floriaden, National Parks,
infrastructural strategies for connecting villages, urban-
rural collaborations, etc.)
- The urbanisation of rural space and the ruralisation of
urban space
- or other topics dealing with current development tendencies
in rural space.

The symposium rounds off the Institute for Sustainable Urbanism’s
BMBF-funded Project Academy of Rural Space (2014-
15). The academy brings together students, city representatives
and citizens in Lower Saxon small cities and villages to
formulate ideas for the development of those places.
Conference proceedings will be published following the
event.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Ecosistema Urbano Madrid
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Sigrun Langner Landscape Architecture and
Planning, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Claudia Oltmanns Graduiertenkolleg Selbstbildungen, Carl
von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
Prof. Jörg Schröder Chair for Regional Building and Urban
Planning, Department of Urban Design and Planning, Leibniz
Universität Hannover
Prof. Dr. Boris Schröder-Esselbach Environmental Systems
Analysis, Institute of Geoecology, TU Braunschweig
Prof. Christiane Sörensen Landscape Architecture, Hafen-
City University Hamburg
Prof. Dr. Eckard Voigts Englisches Seminar, Literary and
Cultural Studies, TU Braunschweig

Please submit your abstract (2000 characters), CV, professional
affiliation, contact details and one page of images/figures
before 15 July 2015 to:
Prof. Dr. Vanessa Miriam Carlow
isu@tu-braunschweig.de

For further information please contact:
Marie Bruun Yde, Conference Coordinator

Technische Universität Braunschweig
Institute for Sustainable Urbanism
Pockelsstrasse 03 - 12th floor
38106 Braunschweig
Germany
E: m.yde@tu-bs.de
T: +49 (0) 531 391 3549
F: +49 (0) 531 391 8103
http://sustainableurbanism.de