AESOP newsletter - October 2025

🎉 𝐖𝐞’𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞: 𝟏𝟎,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬! 🎉

 We’re thrilled to announce that our association’s LinkedIn page has surpassed 10,000 followers — 10,000 people who believe in our mission and share our passion for better, more sustainable, and more inclusive planning.

This achievement is not just a number — it’s a testament to the strength of our community and the growing interest in the values that guide our work: collaboration, critical thinking, and a…

The AESOP Excellence in Education Board is inviting AESOP school members to apply for AESOP's Quality Recognition Programme.

If your planning programme has been fully delivered and you are looking for:

• opportunities to engage in critical dialogue with us concerning the programme's curriculum distinctiveness, planning perspectives, themes/contents, skills development, institutional/programme settings;

• champion best practices of teaching and…

We are delighted to invite you to the 20th AESOP Heads of Schools Meeting:

Planning Resilient Communities in Uncertain Times: Navigating Climate Change and Emerging Technologies

The event will bring together thought leaders in planning education.

Dates: 11-14 March 2026 
Location: Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås (30 km south of Oslo, Norway)

The event is hosted by the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), and co…

We are pleased to invite you to the upcoming AESOP Lecture Series event, titled “Landscapes of Elsewhere: On Borders, Practices and Approaches”, taking place on 20 November 2025 at Spazio Craft, Politecnico di Milano, and accessible both in person and online.

Speakers:
Negar Sanaan Bensi – Assistant Professor Architecture Department, TU Delft, Borders & Territories group;
Tinatin…

AESOP Task Force on AI in Planning

CALL FOR MEMBERSHIP

Deadline: November 15, 2025

Organizers: Juliana Martins, Paulo Silva, Thorsten Wiechmann

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the landscape of urban planning, research, education, and practice. Recognizing its potential and challenges, the AESOP CoRep decided during its meeting in Istanbul in July to establish an AESOP Task Force on AI in Planning. This initiative aims to comprehensively address these…

Both participated in a GPEAN-organized session on “Planning Core Competencies”, chaired by Deden Rukmana. In their joint presentation, they introduced AESOP’s Core Curriculum, which defines the essential knowledge, competencies, and…

The Interplay Between Health, Housing, Planning: A New challenge ?

Guest editors:

• Yaneira Wilson, Centre de Recherche sur l’Habitat LAVUE, ENSAPVS, yaneira.wilson@paris-valdeseine.archi.fr
• Yankel Fijalkow, Centre de Recherche sur l’Habitat LAVUE, ENSAPVS yankel.fijalkow@paris-valdeseine.archi.fr

Description

The intricate connection between health and housing has been extensively documented in academic literature, revealing a multidimensional relationship influenced by…

 

Spotlight Finland: Contemporary challenges in planning practice and urban development

Guest editors:

Eva Purkarthofer, Aalto University, eva.purkarthofer@aalto.fi

Raine Mäntysalo, Aalto University, raine.mantysalo@aalto.fi

Description: Motivated by the 6th World Planning Schools Congress taking place from 29.6. to 3.7.2026 in Espoo and Helsinki, this special issue seeks to provide insights into the reality of planning practice and urban development in Finland.

While peripheral…

WORLD PLANNING SCHOOLS CONGRESS 2026: Call for abstracts, roundtable proposals and PhD workshop applications is open!

The 6^th World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC) will take place from June 29^th to July 3^rd, 2026, in Espoo & Helsinki, Finland. The WPSC PhD workshop will be organized in Tampere prior to the congress (June 26-29, 2026).

The call for abstracts, roundtable proposals and PhD workshop applications is now open until November 11^th, 23:59 EET (Eastern European Time).

Th…

WORLD PLANNING SCHOOLS CONGRESS 2026: Call for abstracts, roundtable proposals and PhD workshop applications is open!

The 6^th World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC) will take place from June 29^th to July 3^rd, 2026, in Espoo & Helsinki, Finland. The WPSC PhD workshop will be organized in Tampere prior to the congress (June 26-29, 2026).

The call for abstracts, roundtable proposals and PhD workshop applications is now open until November 11^th, 23:59 EET (Eastern European Time).

Th…

For the Workshop: How do we say future? in Istanbul 2026 the Deadline for applications has been extended to 16 November 2025. 

The Workshop will be a co-production of the AESOP TG Urban Futures and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul. With "How do we say future?" we want to explore the ways we envision and narrate futures and how this is shaped not only by who is involved, but also by which types of tools and approaches we use, from which disciplines they originate…

Organizer: SPECTRA Centre of Excellence EU, Comenius University, within the framework of the project PM4U – Project Management for EU Urban Transformation
Partners and supporters:

• SPECTRA Centre ofExcellence EU, Comenius University, Bratislava
• AESOP Thematic Group on Transboundary Planning and Governance
• Embassy of Ukraine in the Slovak Republic
• NGO SME–Spolu (Ukraine–Slovakia SOS)

Format: Hybrid (online + onsite, Bratislava, Vazovova 5)

Overview

The event consisted of two…

First European Lecture Series on Small Towns will start in autumn/winter 2025. This lecture series explores current research and practices relating to the development of small and medium-sized towns in selected European countries. It discusses ongoing spatial dynamics, ranging from small neighbourhoods and inner cities to regional and national perspectives. These dynamics are closely linked to political debates and planning strategies in the relevant countries, as well as to…

INVITATION
Pre-Conference Seminar (ONLINE)

We are looking forward to the upcoming 23rd meeting of our thematic group on Planning and Complexity in Gothenburg (Sweden) on 27 and 28 November 2025. To keep us connected and inspired, we have organised an online pre-conference seminar. Open to all members of the thematic group and everyone who feels connected to the group and/or the topic. You can download the invitation as PDF file here.

Adaptive governance: systems perspectives
Kris…

Group members, save the date!

📢 ROBOTS TAKING OVER THE CITY?! CHALLENGES FOR ETHICS AND SPACE, on October 24 at 10:00 CET.
This is the first online seminar of the colloquium series (fall season) by our AESOP - Association of European Schools of Planning Thematic Group: "Ethics, Values and Planning."

🤖 While most of us can probably conjure doomsday-esque images of a robot-driven takeover (think Blade Runner, Westworld, Minority Report, Avengers: Age of Ultron), what do scholars…

The call for contributions for the upcoming conference "Degrowth and the Politics of Space: Tools for Thought and Action" is now open. 
The conference will take place in Amsterdam from 21st to 23rd October 2026.  

The conference will be the first international event to address spatial issues (across disciplines) from a degrowth perspective. It has been organized by a collective of engaged scholars. It is open to both scholars and activists from different background. 

At this…

Beyond Resilience

Submission deadline: 03 November 2025

The concept of sustainability has come under increasing scrutiny in architectural and urban discourse. While its underlying principles remain widely accepted, its applications have often failed to meaningfully address systemic issues and environmental challenges. The term itself has become so diffuse and diluted that it now seldom produces substantive impact in either theory or practice. In response, some have called for…

We invite abstract submissions for the ‘Re-centring land conflicts in the post-globalisation order’ mini-conference (MC11), as part of the SASE 2026 Conference in Bordeaux (1-3 July).

In this mini-conference, we are seeking to have a critical debate about land struggles over sovereignty, resources and means of survival. We are inviting folks to submit abstracts (no more than 1000 words) which raise land as the main object of analysis of power in a ‘post-globalisation order…

Title (tentative): 

Critical Realism and Planning 

Editors: 

Jin Xue, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Norwegian University of Life Sciences jin.xue@nmbu.no 

Rasmus Nedergård Steffansen, Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University rsteff@plan.aau.dk 

Targeted publisher: 

Routledge Studies in Critical Realism 

Call for contributions: 

Planning is an interdisciplinary field, operating at the intersection of science, policy, and lived experience. As the…

We are excited to announce a Call for Papers for an upcoming Special Issue in Urban Research & Practice focused on DataCentre Urbanism.

We welcome contributions that address one or several of the following topics:

- Emerging forms of (local) regulations in planning and land use policy
- Regional and local economic effects of the data centre economy (real estate, employment, taxes, etc.), including geographic patterns (mapping)
- Conflicts and how they are negotiated (and by whom…

Call for Applications

For September 2026 entry, the Bloomberg Philanthropies PhD Studentships in Cities will be available for a number of programmes across the Departments of Government, Geography, Management and Sociology at the London School of Economics & Political Science. Students of all nationalities are eligible for this funding. 

These Studentships will be encouraging a collaborative approach involving city governments as co-hosting institutions. Research students will…

Do you want to help shape greener, more resilient cities across Europe? Are you interested in new perspectives on how urban planning can support reverting soil sealing and create new spaces for biodiversity? 

The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Land-use Systems Group is offering a postdoc position in the project Understanding and enabling the transition towards reverting soil sealing for improving urban biodiversity and nature-based…

 Curator of the Loeb Fellowship

Harvard Graduate School of Design

Full-time 001179SR 

Nominations may be submitted online here.

Company Description 

Why join the Harvard Graduate School of Design? 

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) educates leaders in design, research, and scholarship to make a resilient, just, and beautiful world. The GSD offers an unparalleled setting for interaction through the combination of disciplines—architecture, landscape…