On 8-10 April 2026 the inaugural “BeNeLux Geography” conference will be held in Leuven, Belgium. Visit the conference homepage here.
The BeNeLux Geography conference is organized by the geographical communities of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, and will provide an opportunity to present and debate work in geography and spatial planning as well as ample opportunities for informal conversation and networking. The conference is a continuation, and scaling up, of the bi-annual Belgian Geography Days (hosted by Namur in 2024) and the Dutch Geographers Days (last organized by KNAG in 2006). As such we hope to provide a forum for geographic conversation that is affordable and easy to reach for colleagues in the Benelux and beyond.
The organisation of conference sessions will take place in two phases. The Scientific Committee has proposed a first set of curated sessions. This is now supplemented by a general Call for Sessions that is currently open for submissions. This is your chance to convene your own set of people or papers! The timeline for the Call for Sessions and Papers/Abstracts is as follows:
The BeNeLux Geography conference is organized by the geographical communities of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, and will provide an opportunity to present and debate work in geography and spatial planning as well as ample opportunities for informal conversation and networking. The conference is a continuation, and scaling up, of the bi-annual Belgian Geography Days (hosted by Namur in 2024) and the Dutch Geographers Days (last organized by KNAG in 2006). As such we hope to provide a forum for geographic conversation that is affordable and easy to reach for colleagues in the Benelux and beyond.
The organisation of conference sessions will take place in two phases. The Scientific Committee has proposed a first set of curated sessions. This is now supplemented by a general Call for Sessions that is currently open for submissions. This is your chance to convene your own set of people or papers! The timeline for the Call for Sessions and Papers/Abstracts is as follows:
- General Call for Sessions: 22 September - 15 October 2025
- Call for Papers/Abstracts: 29 October - 9 December 2025
- Conference: 8 - 10 April 2026
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As Scientific Committee Member of BeNeLux Geography, Carr will host a session on the urban governance of AI infrastructures (e.g. data centers) entitled, "From Servers to Cityscapes: The corporeal geographies and governance of AI infrastructural development." The official call for abstracts will follow the timeline and respective procedures set by BeNeLux Geog (see above). In the meantime, feel free to contact Carr to toss around paper proposal ideas (constance.carr@uni.lu). The session description can be found on the list of Curated Sessions at the BeNeLux website and is posted in the following.
Session Title: From Servers to Cityscapes: The corporeal geographies and governance of AI infrastructural development
Session Abstract: Urban geography has long examined the hard infrastructural backbone infrastructures of cyberworlds, unpacking the relationships between urban land use development, governance, and technological innovation. In recent years, data centers have garnered scholarly attention as they proliferate in and around cities posing sociopolitical and environmental risks and challenges. In basic terms, a data center is any building that accommodates IT equipment—servers, racks, electricity/cables, back-up systems, security, cooling. These facilities have grown in size and diversified, and nowadays the industry speaks of hyperscale, exascale, megascale supercomputing centers or hubs. These are high security campuses with unintermittent cooling, on-site energy storage, no fault systems, continuous monitoring, and are increasingly networked with local ecosystems of small business enterprises. Scholars from various fields have pointed out these infrastructures not only put pressure on local governance and planning, but potentially transform the spaces and flows of urbanity (land use regulation, housing, circulation, political economies, equity): Data centers also demand land, electrical grids, and waterways, as well as legal frameworks, specialized labour, local political support and planning.
Session Abstract: Urban geography has long examined the hard infrastructural backbone infrastructures of cyberworlds, unpacking the relationships between urban land use development, governance, and technological innovation. In recent years, data centers have garnered scholarly attention as they proliferate in and around cities posing sociopolitical and environmental risks and challenges. In basic terms, a data center is any building that accommodates IT equipment—servers, racks, electricity/cables, back-up systems, security, cooling. These facilities have grown in size and diversified, and nowadays the industry speaks of hyperscale, exascale, megascale supercomputing centers or hubs. These are high security campuses with unintermittent cooling, on-site energy storage, no fault systems, continuous monitoring, and are increasingly networked with local ecosystems of small business enterprises. Scholars from various fields have pointed out these infrastructures not only put pressure on local governance and planning, but potentially transform the spaces and flows of urbanity (land use regulation, housing, circulation, political economies, equity): Data centers also demand land, electrical grids, and waterways, as well as legal frameworks, specialized labour, local political support and planning.
Industry leaders assert that growth in the data center sector continues to accelerate dramatically, in response to emerging innovations such as–but not limited to–artificial intelligences (AI), and that they will require significantly greater volumes of resources to operate. Similarly, governments are prioiritizing the building of domestic AI infrastructures–such as the European Commission’s AI Factories or the UK’s AI Growth Zones–to reduce cross-national dependencies. In short, there is no indication of the growth pressure in this sector abating. On the contrary, there is an urgent need to address the urban governance of DCs, including questions of spatial planning, local resource management, distribution of wealth, digital literacy and labour, equity and the trade-offs involved in shaping the kinds of living worlds people want to live in.
Data centers are not only a new form of urban infrastructure now surfacing on local political agendas, they are also a lens into the material and corporeal underpinnings and consequences of emerging technologies that those same publics demand. In this session, we will address this paradox. Relevant topics include:
- Challenges in local governance and the spatial planning of digital infrastructures
- Policy and regulatory responses (addressing issues such as resource management, noise, land use, corporate pressure)
- Conflicts and local struggles over land use for digital urbanism
- The value chains of extraction that constitute digital infrastructures
- Creative epistemological and methodological approaches to researching the corporeal dimensions of digital urbanism
- Broader questions of how AI expansion reshapes the material, embodied, corporeal spaces and flows of cities
Convener: Constance Carr (University of Luxembourg)
Type: presentation
Convener: Constance Carr (University of Luxembourg)
Type: presentation
If you want to keep up-to-date, you can follow BeNeLux Geography on LinkedIn and sign up for our newsletter about the conference. You can always contact us with questions through beneluxgeo2026 at kuleuven.be.
