The International conference Building Proximities in a Global World:Territorial, Organisational and Societal Challenges, will be held on 20, 21 and 22 May 2015 in Tours, site des Deux Lions
The 8th International Conference on Proximity aims at continuing the effort for conceptualizing the organizational and institutional logics that underlie the coordination of economic activities within multiscalar territorial dynamics. Beyond the recurrent themes investigated in proximity conferences (especially on the nature of proximities underlying innovation, creativity, and sustainability dynamics in territorial development), the conference ambitions to widen and deepen the interdisciplinary dialogue with scholars from spatial planning, urban studies, political science, geography and environmental sciences. It aims also at investigating the conditions and processes allowing for the conversion of proximities that remain usually only “virtual” or “latent” into “active proximities”, i.e. proximities that become identified, appropriated, operationalized and valorised by the actors within and across territories.
From this perspective, there is a strong need for opening and organising further the dialogue between the researchers and “field actors”. Finally, the conference focuses on another key issue that has mostly remained implicit in the research on proximity, i.e.: How to build local proximities in a global world, or at least in a “more open” one?
