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Globalization and Civic Space: Cities, Community Life and the Public Sphere - A Dialogic Conference
The rise of civil society in community and public life is widely observed throughout the world. The central proposition of the proposed research and dialogic conference is that to realize the promises of an active society engaged in community and public life, spaces of tolerance and inclusion must be available for people to gather, build a sense of shared bonds and social networks, and engage in debate and dialogue in the public sphere of governance. Such "civic spaces" can foster self-respect, public skills, and the value of cooperation. Defined as those spaces in which people of different origins and walks of life can co-mingle without overt control by government, commercial or other private interests, or de facto dominance of one group over another, civic spaces are fundamental to an engaged society with a public imagination.
As the world enters its first urban century with more than half of its population living in cities, the production and sustenance of such spaces for the fruition of civic culture as part of the public realm of governance also increases in importance. This need is particularly manifest, but certainly not limited to, societies in Pacific (East and Southeast) Asia, which, over the past three decades, have been experiencing among the most rapid and condensed processes of urbanization in world history. While globalization brings to this region promises of wider access to information that has become crucial in more localized grass-roots social mobilization toward democratic forms of government, it also brings powerful forces that are changing the built environment of cities toward more commercialized, commodified relations that can undermine the provision and integrity of civic spaces. This project seeks to better understand these outcomes in terms of the fruition of civil society and good governance as seen through the prisms of civic spaces.
In August 2005 researchers from 12 countries will be brought together for a Dialogic Conference on civic space. This conference is intended to lead to scholarly publications and policy advocacy.
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