This year, 18 articles were nominated by journal editors for the AESOP Best Published Paper Award. From these, AESOP’s Best Published Paper Committee shortlisted the following five articles:
- August, M., & St-Hilaire, C. (2025). Financialization, housing rents and affordability in Toronto. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 57(5), 517-535.https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X251328129
- Davy, B. (2025). Imperial and colonial amnesia of European planning academics – the case of AESOP’s eurocentrism. Town Planning Review, 96,123-138. https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2024.65
- Kajosaari, A., Schorn, M., Hasanzadeh, K., Rinne, T., Rossi, S., & Kyttä, M. (2025). Beyond the backyard: Unraveling the geographies of citizens’ engagement in digital participatory planning. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 52(4), 770-788. https://doi.org/10.1177/23998083241271460
- Moss, T., Fischhendler, I., Herman, L., Lukin, S., Papasozomenou, O., Rettig, E., ... & Sonan, S. (2025). Energy infrastructures in divided cities. Progress in planning, 191, 100910. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2024.100910
- Sjöholm, J. (2025). Kiruna: The Arctic town that forgot about winter. Urban Design International.https://doi.org/10.1057/s41289-025-00277-4
The committee is delighted to announce that this year’s Best Published Paper Award goes to Timothy Moss et al. for their paper entitled ‘Energy infrastructures in divided cities’, published in Progress in Planning.
With a particularly thought-provoking reconceptualisation of infrastructures within contested urban geographies, Moss et al. offer a nuanced understanding of how energy systems operate not merely as technical systems but as socio-material and political instruments of power and control. Their historical perspective is rich in technical, economic, and political details on how cities are energy-connected even in times of strict separation. But they also highlight the economic and political power that can be exerted via infrastructure. The article stands out for its ability to combine theoretical ambition, conceptual sophistication, and methodological depth within a highly original comparative framework. Bridging multiple strands of scholarship and methods, the paper makes a significant contribution to urban studies, infrastructure research, geopolitics and the study of conflict and governance in contested cities. All committee members wish to congratulate the authors on receiving this year’s award.
AESOP Best Published Paper Committee
Elisabetta Vitale-Brovarone, Committee Chair (Politecnico di Torino, Italy); Antonio Ferreira (University of Porto, Portugal), Michael Getzner (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), Menelaos Gkartzios* (Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey, and Newcastle University, United Kingdom), Kadri Leetmaa (University of Tartu, Estonia), Süleyman Adahi ŞAHİN (TSakarya University of Applied Sciences).
