Calgary Institute for the Humanities
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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For over 5000 years, cities have been a primary forum for meaning-making and
place-making. They have been studied in artifacts, literature, and history,
expressed in texts, visual and performing arts, and they have been analyzed
in their social and physical settings. Cities have inspired imagination,
signified aspirations, and they have demonstrated human limitations.
The world is rapidly moving to a new context characterized by profound
influences of cities. Indeed, for the first time in history, over half of
the world lives in urban centers. No country is preventing urban migration
and it is likely that populations will continue to grow in scale and
complexity.
*The Urban Age* – a cooperative initiative by the London School of Economics
dealing with the future of cities – notes that after decades of neglect,
cities in the 21st century are at the center of economic growth, and are
focal points of social, political and cultural innovation. The city is now
viewed as an agglomeration of opportunities, a promising milieu, and as a
resource rather than a liability.
To know and understand cities – built or imagined – is to know and
understand ourselves.
*Proposals are invited for the 25th Annual Conference of the Western
Humanities Alliance on the theme: "What Is A City?"*
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http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/Others/CIH/call%20for%20papers%20wha.html*