This symposium - organized by the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) as part of ICAS 12 - will foreground everyday urban practices as a source of knowledge and action in relation to the climate. What do the narratives and activities of city residents reveal about how the climate is changing? How are shifting climatic conditions conceptualized, experienced, addressed or ignored on the ground? How is a sense of vulnerability or resilience in relation to the weather perceived at the level of the household, street or neighbourhood? And how might urban lived experience be mobilized to produce more inclusive and sustainable urban planning strategies?

The symposium will address these questions and more from the perspective of residents of coastal cities in Asia and Africa. Coastal cities, which house ever-growing numbers of people on both continents, are widely recognized as being particularly vulnerable to rising waters and extreme weather events. Creating a space for dialogue between those working on urban coastal climate change around the world, we seek to support a transnational and interdisciplinary network of scholars, committed to multi-centring knowledge production in this field. 

See the symposium programme here. For more information about the objectives and scope, download the concept note (pdf) for this event.

The symposium is organized by the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA), with the generous support of our event partners, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the SOAS South Asia Institute (SSAI). It will be held online on 24-25 August 2021, during the 12th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 12), hosted by Kyoto Seika University. See here for more information about ICAS 12.