CFP: "M32 - CITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT UNDER TWENTIETH CENTURY AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES", EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR URBAN HISTORY (EAUH) CONFERENCE

“M32 - Cities and the Environment under Twentieth Century Authoritarian Regimes”, 

European Association for Urban History (EAUH) Conference

Short abstract

This panel focuses on the environmental history of cities with particular focus on authoritarian regimes across the globe. The panel aims to incorporate papers analyzing the history of cities and the environment on both the political left and right starting from the Russian Revolutions until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Session content

When historians of technology or the environment have investigated the environmental consequences of authoritarian regimes, they have frequently argued that authoritarian regimes have been unable to produce positive environmental results or adjust successfully to global structural change, if they have shown any concern for the environment at all. Put another way, the scholarly consensus holds that authoritarian regimes on both the left and the right generally have demonstrated an anti-environmentalist bias, and when opposed by environmentalist social movements, have succeeded in silencing those voices.

In contrast, this panel takes as its points of departure that authoritarian societies have developed environmentalist policies of their own, that environmentalism is a protean ideology, and that the sets of structures and priorities prevailing in the West represent only some of many possibilities.

The present panel aims to investigate the above described theory on the environmental history of cities with particular focus on authoritarian regimes across the globe. This panel aims to incorporate papers analyzing the history of cities and the environment on both the political left and right starting from the Russian Revolutions until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although the panel's chronology is linked to the existence of the USSR, its focus is not confined solely to socialist cities, rather it aims to facilitate discussion between scholars working with rightwing and leftwing authoritarian regimes across the globe from Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, Africa and Europe.

Suggested themes for individual papers include:

• Politics and the environment in authoritarian regimes

• Urban planning under authoritarian regimes (construction/destruction, new concepts) and its environmental dimension

• Authoritarian regimes, cities and economic growth (impact of industry, commerce and networks)

• Water and the city (Urban water bodies, Municipal and industrial water and wastewater)

• Consumption and waste; waste management in authoritarian regimes

• Urban space, environmental disasters and their solutions in authoritarian regimes

• War, war preparation and the urban environment

• Air quality: heating, transport, industry

• Animals in the city

• Leisure and green spaces

• Suburbanization, motorization,

• City and its surroundings: urban metabolism

Any other theme that fits the proposed methodological and chronological frame of the panel is welcome!

Please submit your proposals by September 30, 2023.

Kindly see the submittal guidelines.

Contact Email

cesh@osu.cz

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