{"id":635,"date":"2026-10-12T12:09:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T12:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/?p=635"},"modified":"2026-10-12T12:09:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T12:09:47","slug":"doctoral-seminar-rural-urban-assemblages-exploring-the-continuum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/2026\/10\/12\/doctoral-seminar-rural-urban-assemblages-exploring-the-continuum\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctoral seminar: Rural urban assemblages, exploring the continuum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Interuniversity doctoral seminar<\/strong><br \/>\nin collaboration with ULB and UCLouvain\/ULi\u00e8ge<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1 Dec 2026, Leuven<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the Low Lands, cities and villages have long blurred into one another: ribbon developments, dispersed housing, industrial fragments, farmland and infrastructure form a continuous, in-between territory. Terms such as the <em>diffuse city<\/em>, <em>horizontal metropolis<\/em> or <em>rural\u2013urban continuum<\/em> have tried to capture it. Yet they mostly describe it from the city outward, so the rural becomes what is left over or &#8220;not yet urban&#8221;. The seminar <em>Rural\u2013urban assemblages, exploring the Continuum<\/em> takes a different starting point. It treats the urban and the rural not as opposites but as overlapping, entangled qualities, made through infrastructures, landscapes, ecological systems, agriculture, commoning and everyday practices. Taking Belgium as a particularly rich case, it asks what forms of rurality, urbanity and territorial agency appear when we stop working with centres and hierarchies. We bring together PhD research and spatial practice from urbanism, architecture, landscape, geography, anthropology and related fields.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Read more about it here: <a title=\"https:\/\/architectuur.kuleuven.be\/departementarchitectuur\/english\/research-sections\/research-groups\/laboratory-architecture-and-practice\/items-1\/rural-urban-assemblages-exploring-the-continuum\/rural-urban-assemblages-exploring-the-continuum\" href=\"https:\/\/architectuur.kuleuven.be\/departementarchitectuur\/english\/research-sections\/research-groups\/laboratory-architecture-and-practice\/items-1\/rural-urban-assemblages-exploring-the-continuum\/rural-urban-assemblages-exploring-the-continuum\">Rural urban assemblages, exploring the continuum<\/a><\/li>\n<li>This seminar is part of the <a title=\"https:\/\/architectuur.kuleuven.be\/departementarchitectuur\/english\/research-sections\/research-groups\/laboratory-architecture-and-practice\/items-1\/villageness-festival-2026\/villageness-festival-2026\" href=\"https:\/\/architectuur.kuleuven.be\/departementarchitectuur\/english\/research-sections\/research-groups\/laboratory-architecture-and-practice\/items-1\/villageness-festival-2026\/villageness-festival-2026\">Villageness Festival 2026<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"kul-card-image card mb-3 text-bg-primary\">\n<div class=\"card-body\">\n<p>CALL FOR ABSTRACTS &#8211; RURAL URBAN ASSEMBLAGES, EXPLORING THE CONTINUUM:<\/p>\n<p>Timing<br \/>\nCall for abstracts deadline: 25 Oct 2026<br \/>\nConfirmation of selection: 1 Nov 2026<\/p>\n<p>Send your abstract to:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kuleuven.be\/wieiswie\/nl\/person\/00029139\">Ward Verbakel<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>We invite doctoral researchers, research-by-design practitioners, postdocs, and professors to submit contributions that examine or question the urban-rural continuum (max. 600 words).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Topics may include:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Beyond the Urban-Rural Continuum: Assemblages, multiplex territories, relational geographies.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Village Urbanism: Villages as active territorial agents rather than residual settlements.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Infrastructures and Territorial Networks: Mobility, logistics, energy, water and digital systems.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Productive ecologies and More-than-Human Territorialities: Agriculture, food systems, resources and rural economies, watersheds, habitats, climate adaptation, ecological networks &#8230;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Commoning and Territorial Governance: Collective practices, stewardship, local agency and new institutional forms.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Designing and Representing Rural and\/or Urban Assemblages: Design research, cartography, spatial practice and new modes of territorial representation.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interuniversity doctoral seminar in collaboration with ULB and UCLouvain\/ULi\u00e8ge 1 Dec 2026, Leuven In the Low Lands, cities and villages have long blurred into one another: ribbon developments, dispersed housing, industrial fragments, farmland and infrastructure form a continuous, in-between territory. Terms such as the diffuse city, horizontal metropolis or rural\u2013urban continuum have tried to capture [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[188,179],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":637,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog-archkuleuven.be\/urban-design-spatial-planning-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}