Submission deadline:

March 3, 2023

Spatial (His)stories of Climate Change and Mobilities

The editors seek original, unpublished papers for a special journal issue on the theme of historical and current spatial aspects of climate change, including climate mobilities. The special issue will be pitched in early Spring 2023 to interdisciplinary journals concerned with space, society, and their environmental aspects, such as Environment and Planning D, City, and Mobilities. At this point, the editors seek initial expressions of interest through the submission of abstracts; full papers will be invited upon the journal’s acceptance of the special issue.

The special issue will examine and theorize the transformations in built environments which occurred throughout history and in recent years following climatic changes and their induced mobilities. The editors invite papers that consider the transition, circulation, and movement of diverse human and nonhuman
environments, ideas, models, and materials, their influence on existing built environments and the emergence of new ones, as well as on the disappearance of specific spatial forms and forms of life due to climatic changes. Papers may address any time period or geographic context. The editors are especially interested in papers that draw explicitly from spatial studies, as well as colonial studies and critical Indigenous studies, with the aim to cover a variety of stories which we could learn from on ways climatic changes and mobilities have spatially unfolded, and addressed, in recent or earlier periods.

Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects life, livelihoods, and built environments worldwide. About 25 million people are displaced annually due to climate-related hazards such as floods and droughts, and more than 140 million people might become climate migrants within the borders of their countries by 2050. Climate change and disasters also make part of the histories of population movements, displacement and emplacement, and of the creation of alternative spaces of refuge, care, control, and habitation. The late 18th Century British-India colonial famine-relief camps, for example, were formed following the distress caused by intense drought affecting approximately fifty million people in the sub-continent. In Palestine, the climatic fluctuations in the southern Negev
district at the early 20th Century have harmed agriculture and almost eliminated business investments. The 1927 Mississippi River flood in the US and the 1931 China floods have displaced millions while transforming the built environment. These changes indicate that it is possible to learn from the spatial, architectural, and urban histories of climatic changes and disasters and their related mobilities to assist in articulating better spatial approaches to future climatic events.

This special issue proposes to contribute to a better understanding of the historical and more contemporary relationships between climate change and the built environment including climate mobilities and spatial adjustments that influence forms of prevention, resilience, repair and the emergence of new social and built formations. Papers may relate to the contested geopolitical, cultural and historical constructs of built environments that faced gradual or abrupt climate changes or disasters, including related human mobility, in a variety of contexts scales and forms including buildings, neighborhoods, camps, cities and other modes of human settlements. Contributors are invited to discuss aspects of spatial-oriented and urban climatic discourses, such as those examining relations between ongoing transformations, crisis, politics and spatial formations, including relevant subjects such as racialized spaces, colonialism, and coloniality.

Please submit a working title, a 200-word abstract, and 5 to 7 keywords to Irit Katz ik300@cam.ac.uk
and Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat fatinaabreek@tauex.tau.ac.il by Friday, 3 March, 2023. Also please submit a short author biography (100 words max) as well as your full CV. Authors will be notified by 24 March if their abstract has been selected for inclusion in the initial proposal to the journal; deadlines for the submission of full manuscripts will be determined shortly after the special issue is accepted. Full manuscripts will be approximately 7,000-9,000 words, including all tables, references, figure captions, footnotes, and endnotes, and will undergo a full peer-review process.

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