Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
City-mountain relations: between historical tensions and new partnerships - a view from the European Alps
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
The presentation debates the city-mountain relations by stressing the ambivalent relationship between the two. Through time, the urban logic has prevailed more and more on mountain areas and mountain societies. This has led to some tensions but this also has offered some opportunities. After decades of tensions, could new partnership between the two emerge? This question is examined in the context of the European Alps. The presentation addresses the issues of functional territorial relations but also issues of identity. How does the mountain specify an identity of a town, a city or even a metropolis? The presentation considers different types of urban settlements: mountain towns/cities, cities and agglomerations in the mountains, and metropolises on the edge of mountain ranges.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Gilles Rudaz is lecturer and associate researcher in the Department of geography and environment at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. After completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Mountain Management at the Institute of Alpine Geography and a PhD in Social and Economic Sciences at the University of Geneva, he was a postdoc at University of California-Berkeley (2006-2007) and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007-2010). His research focuses on the social, cultural and political construction of mountains. He examines the processes of how societies conceive mountain areas, environment and societies as specific. He notably published The Mountain: A Political History from the Enlightenment to the Present (Debarbieux & Rudaz, University of Chicago Press, 2015). He has worked on various mountain regions of the world and he is a leading scholar on European and Swiss mountain politics and policies. He published the reference book on Swiss mountain policies (Rudaz & Debarbieux, 2013, 2014).
City-mountain relations: between historical tensions and new partnerships - a view from the European Alps
The presentation debates the city-mountain relations by stressing the ambivalent relationship between the two. Through time, the urban logic has prevailed more and more on mountain areas and mountain societies. This has led to some tensions but this also has offered some opportunities. After decades of tensions, could new partnership between the two emerge? This question is examined in the context of the European Alps. The presentation addresses the issues of functional territorial relations but also issues of identity. How does the mountain specify an identity of a town, a city or even a metropolis? The presentation considers different types of urban settlements: mountain towns/cities, cities and agglomerations in the mountains, and metropolises on the edge of mountain ranges.
