CITIES International Conference is an annual international conference continually held by the Urban and Planning Regional Department of Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS Surabaya). With its debut conference in 2005, CITIES was and has been designated as a vessel for researchers, academics, and practitioners to present, disseminate, and discuss research results and scientific analyses in urban and regional research areas. Through the dedicated endeavors of every party, CITIES, which was once national-scoped in its early years, has transformed into an international-scoped conference since 2013. Thus, the diversity of speakers and participants has expanded to a worldwide audience, be it from the Asian, European, Australian, or American Continent.
The theme ushered in each CITIES International Conference will vary annually, with each year’s theme being determined by the Steering Committee comprising of the representatives of the Department and laboratories through considerations of numerous aspects comprehensively. The conference history of CITIES for the last five years are as follows.
CITIES International Conference 2022 will bring the theme “FUTURE CHALLENGES OF THE SYSTEM OF CITIES”. Cities do not function in isolation, but a city is a system that has very strong interdependencies between a large region, a nation, a continent or even on a global scale (Pumain, 2011). It is this relationship that needs to be discussed in depth so as not to let the relationship that is expected to create a trickle-down effect turn into a backwash effect.
Systems of cities can also be explained as to why production and consumption activities are concentrated in a number of urban areas of different sizes and industrial compositions rather than uniformly distributed in space (Rahman, 2004).
This system will affect increasing returns in national and global economies, the factors that determine skill distribution and income disparity between cities, the impacts of income disparity on welfare, and how resources should be allocated efficiently in a system of cities (Rahman, 2004).
Seeing the importance of this topic regarding the city system, the CITIES 2022 international conference was prepared to be a forum for stakeholders from academics, researchers, practitioners, and government to exchange ideas about the direction of the System of Cities development in the future.
With said necessity, CITIES International Conference 2022 is designated to become a meeting place for stakeholders, be it academia, researchers, practitioners, and bureaucrats within and beyond national boundaries, to disseminate research results, and practical experiences at local, national, and global levels, as wells as share insights and recommendations regarding of the system cities plans and management
