Urban research and debate often refer to the ‘shaping’ of urban life or how cities ‘take shape’ to frame urban change. But the actual shapes, shape-thinking and shape-making involved are rarely explicitly articulated. Shapes and the City seeks to better foreground shapes in urban research, and assess their role and relevance. In the process, it aims to join the dots in new ways between different approaches and understandings in urban scholarship and engagement.

A focus might be developed on, for example, gyratory systems, circular economies, Ferris wheels, metro lines, urban shapeshifters, social pyramids, triangulation towers, black boxes, skateboarding ramps, potholes, digital polygons, concentric rings and more.

The event is open to all UCL staff and students based in any department. It aims to provide an opportunity for UCL urbanists to make new links and connections across the full spectrum of specialisms that UCL enjoys. As well as two parallel sessions of presentations, there will be a networking reception at the end of the afternoon.

Contributors will be asked to present a short paper (5-10 minutes) that considers the role and place of particular shapes and processes of shape-making in their urban research or teaching. This should not attempt a full account of a particular project but present certain shape-related details, snippets, diagrams, vignettes, images or examples illustrative of wider work.

Expressions of interest are solicited from staff and students across UCL. Students can be at any stage of their studies at UCL, and we welcome alumni who have graduated in the last two years. 

How to apply

Submit your abstract and shape-related image by 2 May. Please indicate which shape will feature in your presentation. UCL email required.

Submit your abstract

The range of questions to be considered include, but are not limited to:

  • How do the shapes common to urban design and planning, such as the city square, block and roundabout, shape social life and interaction?
  • How have particular shapes featured in the content or analysis of urban artwork, architecture, music, dance and literature? 
  • What ways are different shapes and polygons used in forms of urban mapping, modelling and surveying, and what relation do they have with physical shapes and features of the city?
  • How are certain shapes and geometrical objects, such as pyramids and spheres, deployed in symbolising and explaining urban relationships and processes?
  • How can urban thinking and theory-making be understood and represented in terms of different shapes? To what extent do some theoretical approaches operate beyond shapes?
  • How are shapes central to temporal and spatial cosmologies connected to different cultures of urban life? 
  • How are celestial shapes (e.g. spirals, constellations) used to explore and understand cities? 
  • How are shapes utilised in urban branding and visual identity?
  • Why are certain urban buildings, sites, projects and neighbourhoods given names that draw from, or allude to, shapes? 
  • How are approaches to validating urban research shaped by shapes: e.g. in processes of triangulation?
  • How do shapes feature in forms and practices of urban-related education and pedagogy?
  • How are shapes, and their relationship to natural (and supernatural) phenomenon, bound up with different forms of environmental and ecological thinking in urban studies?
  • How can strategies towards writing the city be informed by particular shapes?

We look forward to receiving your applications. 

UCL Urban Lab and SHS

Shapes and the City is designed to support and reaffirm the work of UCL Urban Lab. Over the past two decades, the department has had a central role in forging and fashioning cross-disciplinary urban engagement at UCL. This event is organised by several staff members of the Urban Lab based in the Social and Historical Sciences (SHS) Faculty. Urban Lab now sits as a department within The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, but continues to operate as a cross-faculty initiative. The department was first founded and launched from SHS with three co-Directors (out of five) currently from this Faculty.

SHS staff