CALL for PAPERS

For an Issue of “TRIALOG – A Journal for Planning and Building in the Third World”

Title: Urban Development and Spirituality

Relevance of the topic

Urban development and spirituality may seem to link two very distant subjects. Spirituality is
particularly conspicuous by its absence in urban development practice/theory as well international
development practice and its theoretical discourse. However, the empirical reality in the developing
world both, in the perceived “traditional” rural village environment or in the modern-oriented urban
context, exhibit plenty of examples of the significance of spirituality and its importance to the
people. In addition to this empirical evidence that spirituality matters in people’s lives across the
world, there seems to be a revival of spirituality and faith especially in the Western hemisphere as a
critical response to the predominance of the scientific, materialist perspective of the universe. This
movement is linked to philosophies and theories that emerge around the issue of
integrating/unifying our specialized and compartmentalized knowledge systems.

Urban life in its countless varieties has become the way of living for the majority of humankind. This
is a significant marker or transformation of the human condition. The de facto absence of spirituality
in Western cities is visible in the total neglect of any link between urbanization or urban
development and spirituality in the literature. Likewise, the revival of spirituality in the West has not
entered the field of urban planning theory or planning practice, even though the implications may be
manifold. One reason why it is so hard to re-define, re-think and re-imagine the city in terms of the
spiritual might be that “Large modern cities, as centres of human endeavour, tend to regard
themselves as centres of the universe and have effectively declared their independence from nature”
(Girardet 2008: 5).

It is disputed whether and to what extent urbanization also contributed to the progressing
disenchantment of people’s imaginaries. Many scholars maintain, the climax of this view of “The
Secular City” (Harvey Cox 1965) was reached in the 20th century. Yet only twenty years later Cox felt
to observe a return of religion to the Secular City (Cox 1984). In any case, by the twentieth century,
industrial societies in particular were strongly oriented to the cognitive, the rational, and the logical,
with devastating consequences: science largely unrestrained by ethics (whether from religion or
anywhere else) helped to deliver the most violent and most environmentally damaging century in
human history (Gardner 2002: 9). At the same time, urbanization played a role in the modernist
development path that was exported to the developing world with the same aim to ‘rationalise’
those societies: “The organizing premise was the belief in the role of modernization as the only force
capable of destroying archaic superstitions and relations, at what ever social, cultural, and political
cost. Industrialization and urbanization were seen as the inevitable and necessarily progressive
routes to modernization” (Escobar 2005: 86).

A pivotal assumption of the above argument is that urbanization and the notion of development are
both causes and drivers of modernization, they are, just like industrialization and rational thought,
part of what is commonly understood as “modernity”. This process resulted in a rigid separation of
science and spirituality/religion, with the former rising to become the sole perspective of interpreting
reality, the universe and everything else, and the latter being exiled in the name of secularity from
academic discourse and the practice of life. In response to this development of epistemologies, the
critique of science (actually on “scientism”) and modernity coupled with advances in quantum
physics resulted in “new” scientific insights (e.g. complexity and chaos theory), endeavours in
recognizing the “Tao of Physics” by combining Western knowledge and Eastern wisdom which

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subsequently gave rise in the past thirty years to meta-theoretical and integral philosophy that
attempt to reconcile the schism of matter and mind. Eventually, these emerging scientific and
philosophical insights - so it is assumed and expected and hoped - will trigger a new understanding of
the world, a new cosmology.

Concept of the Issue

In addition to global challenges like climate change, financial crisis, food security, and other pressing
issues, cities are facing a multitude of critical problems. Some are:
• Increasing urbanization, human species turning into an urban species;
• Increasing cosmopolitanisation of cities, multi-ethnic urban environments;
• sustainability and climate change evoke questions of the spiritual dimension and a review of
the human-nature relationship;
• Social degradation/vulnerability in urban neighbourhoods: “mal-development” of children,
youth and other marginalized groups.

As a result of this brief introduction to the topic, a series of questions arise, which may be addressed
in this issue:
- How are religion and spirituality different? What is their relationship/interface?
- What does spirituality mean in the context of planning, planning theory/practice and the
practitioner? Is it another analytical category for practitioners or an inherent dimension that
needs to be practiced in some way?
- How and why do city dwellers take recourse to spirituality? What is or may be the role(s) of
spirituality for urban societies?
- Which are the potentials of spirituality for the planning profession and urban development
planning? Case studies from different regions of the world?
- Is it feasible to integrate spirituality with urban development? Its role in relation to very
practical approaches/instruments: governance, participation and communication, analysing
and understanding the city and its inhabitants;
- How is spirituality related to (human) development? What is or may be its role in
international development?
- In which way is spirituality expressed in an urban context in different parts of the world?
- “Best practices” demonstrating the role of spirituality in urban development?

Obviously, these are complex and sometimes fundamental questions which may not be answered or
tackled conclusively in a TRIALOG issue. Its purpose is rather to introduce an altogether neglected
topic to urban development and practitioners in an explorative fashion. Insofar it is much more
opening “Pandora’s box” to figure out some of the opportunities, potentials and, of course,
difficulties by considering spirituality in urban development.

Potential topics that may be covered in this issue:

• Community development and spirituality
• Ethnic co-existence, ethnic strife and the role of spirituality
• Urban sustainability and climate change
• Social degradation and marginalization
• Spirituality and poverty reduction, social/environmental justice

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What is TRIALOG?
TRIALOG is:
• A journal for architects, planners, sociologists, geographers, economists and development
planners.
• A journal for the exchange of professional experience in the field of urban development in the
Third World.
• A journal for the presentation and discussion of new research results and for the discussion of
recent concepts of development policies for urban change.
• A journal of free discussions, of work reports and of documentation of alternative approaches.
The thematic range of TRIALOG includes among other related topics: urbanization and housing
policy/ architecture and regional cultures/ecology, technological transfer and appropriate
technologies/rural development strategies.
Each issue will be peer-reviewed.
TRIALOG is a quarterly journal published in Germany. The journal recently celebrated the 25th
anniversary with its 100th Issue.
The last issues were on
• 102/103 (3/09 4/09) Redefining the Urban
• 101 (2/09) Borders and Migration
• 100 (2/09) Urban Visions
• 99 (1/09) East Africa
• 98 (3/08) Forced Evictions
• 97 (2/08) Es wandelt sich
• 95/96 (4/07 1/08) Think future
• 94 (3/07) Housing Policies
• 93 (1/07) Imposing European Urban Structures
• 92 (1/07) Megacities
• 91 (4/06) Building on Disasters
• 90 (3/06) Urban Coalitions
• 89 (2/06) Controlling Urban Space
• 88 (1/06) Afghanistan
• 87 (4/05) Violence and Insecurity in Cities

Instructions for Contributors

For technical and editorial reasons please consider the following guidelines. Please avoid delays in
publishing if these guidelines are not carefully considered.

The issue will be published in English.

Publishing is for free, however, authors have to ensure the quality of English language and of
graphics and photographs.
Each author receives 3 copies.
Each article should not extend 18,000 characters.
Graphics and photographs must be send as separate files as jpg., tif or another format (not only
included in the WORD text file).
File type: MS WORD
Do not copy and paste photographs from WORD documents as the resolution is too low for printing.
Photographs have to have 300 dpi resolution at least.

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Diagrams and other graphs should be part of the text. We will convert them into the correct format
during editing.
References: In the text please use the following format for quotations:
“The cities are growing” (Name Year: page number) example: “the cities are growing” (Scholz 2008:
68)
for not direct quotations use: (see Scholz 2008: 23)
At the end of the article please list your references in alphabetical order like
Name (year): Title. Location of publisher.
Example:
Scholz, Wolfgang (2008): The African City. Nairobi.
If you quote an article or a chapter in a book by other editors:
Scholz, Wolfgang: The African City. In: Wemhöner, Antje (ed.) (2008): The City. Nairobi.
For photographs or other graphs:
Fig. 1 or table 1: Title
Then the graphic itself
Source: Scholz 2008
Example:
Fig 1. Urban growth of Dar es Salaam

Source: John Briggs, University of Glasgow and Davis Mwamfupe, University of Dar es Salaam. Cartography by Mike Shand,
University of Glasgow.

Dates and Deadlines

We invite you to submit a one page proposal until Monday 28 February 2011. Please e-mail your
contributions to
christoph.woiwode@tu-dortmund.de

The selection of papers will take place in March. By the end of March you will be informed about the
decision.

Full papers must be submitted until Tuesday 31 May 2011.

The issue is due to be published at the end of 2011.

Dr. Christoph Woiwode Dr. Wolfgang Scholz

(Guest Editor of this Issue) (Trialog Editorial Board)