Monday 8. September 2025Prof. Denise Pumain
Emeritus Professor
University Paris
Panthéon-Sorbonne
Co-evolution and sustainability of
European cities
Over time (decades and even centuries) is observed a rather strong
persistency of structural properties (relative size and spacing, functional diversity and complementarity) of the European system of cities. We can explain this long sustainability of European cities through two major aspects of their dynamics that are emphasized in the evolutionary theory of urban systems. The first is the generic
adaptive process that is linked to the
spatial and hierarchical diffusion of innovations. This is revealed by century’s long urban growth patterns and
fluctuations that have similarities with
the stochastic Gibrat’s model, and by
the recent evolution in scaling laws of economic attributes corresponding
to the globalization of urban activities. The second process is an historical path dependence that is linked
with the configuration of interaction networks between cities and their regional environments. Differentiated models of territorial governance, border effects and geopolitical contexts including temporal barriers and cohesion policies are possible explanatory factors of these historical traces
in the urban evolution. These dynamic
trends may be considered by stakeholders in local and regional policies for ensuring the viability of such an urban geodiversity in the future.
Thursday 11. September 2025
Prof. Judith Miggelbrink
Professor of Regional Geography, University of Leipzig, Director of the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography
Geographies in/of the
Anthropocene. Preliminary
thoughts from a human geography
perspective
What might human geography look
like if we truly take the planetary seriously – not just as backdrop or scale, but as a fundamental shift in how we
understand space, knowledge,and
responsibility? In this keynote, I explore how the “planetary turn” challenges us to rethink not only our geographies, but also the ways in which we produce and legitimize knowledge itself. Drawing on the visual and conceptual power of planetary imaginaries – from the iconic “blue marble” to
the debris-strewn landscapes of the
Anthropocene – I trace how planetary
thinking destabilizes inherited binaries such as global/local, nature/culture, and subject/object. This opens
the door to a reimagined human geography: one that is attuned to entangled temporalities, responsive to deep relationalities, and committed to pluriversal, situated knowledge practices and “tentacular thinking”
(Haraway). While the planetary turn itself is far from uncontested – raising
critical questions about universality, positionality, scale, and power – it
nonetheless offers a provocative lens for rethinking the role of geography
today. In light of escalating ecological and epistemic crises, this is less a call for ready-made answers than an invitation to critically reflect on our modes of knowledge and to explore new, perhaps still uncertain, ways of engaging with a shared and fragile planet.
