RGS 2026 Panel 1-4 Sept London CfP

*** Call for Paper*** RGS 2026 Annual Conference

Date: Tuesday 1 to Friday 4 September 2026

https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference

Location: RGS and Imperial College London

Submitting Your Abstract to joseph.zhao@uws.ac.uk by 5 March 2026 9:00 GMT

Living with Urban Inequality: Ageing, Well-being, and Mobility

Co-Convenors:

Dr Joseph Hongsheng Zhao (University of the West of Scotland)

Dr Sophie Yarker (University of Salford)

The panel is seeking sponsorship from Urban Geography Research Group (UGRG)

Living with Urban Inequality: Ageing, Well-being, and Mobility

Urban inequality is lived not only through income disparities or housing outcomes, but through everyday experiences of ageing, care, health, and movement across the city (Lefebvre, 1991; Harvey, 2008). As urban populations age amid widening socio-spatial inequalities, access to mobility, services, social infrastructure, and meaningful participation in urban life becomes increasingly uneven (WHO, 2007). These inequalities are shaped by intersecting relations of class, gender, ethnicity, migration status, and health, and are embedded in neighbourhood change, welfare restructuring, and urban governance (Soja, 2010).

This session brings together urban geographical research that examines how inequality is produced, experienced, and negotiated through the everyday mobilities and immobility of ageing populations. Mobility is understood broadly, encompassing physical movement, access to urban services, social participation, and connections across neighbourhood, city, and transnational scales. The session foregrounds well-being as relational and spatially contingent, shaped by both structural conditions and everyday practices of care, support, and belonging (O’Neil, 2020).

We invite papers that engage empirically and/or theoretically with urban inequality through the lenses of ageing, well-being, and mobility. Relevant themes include but are not limited to:

·  Ageing in unequal urban environments

·  Health, well-being, and spatial inequality

·  Everyday mobilities, immobility, and access to the city

·  Migration, transnational ageing, and urban belonging

·  Gendered, racialised, and classed experiences of later life

·  Care, social infrastructure, and neighbourhood support systems

·  Urban policy, governance, and the uneven provision of care and services

·  Methodological approaches to researching ageing and inequality in cities

The session welcomes qualitative, comparative, and critical contributions that situate lived experience within wider urban processes, contributing to long-standing debates in urban geography around inequality, social reproduction, and uneven development.

Email joseph.zhao@uws.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Yours sincerely,

Joseph, Sophie