- Bäcklund Pia, Kanninen Vesa, Hanell Tomas (2023). Accepting Depoliticisation? Council Members’ Attitudes Towards Public-Public Contracts in Spatial Planning, Planning Theory and Practice, 24:2, 173-189.
- Ortiz Catalina (2023). Storytelling otherwise: Decolonising storytelling in planning, Planning Theory, 22:2, 177-200.
- Parker Gavin, Wargent Matthew, Salter Kat, Yuille Andy (2023). Neighbourhood planning in England: A decade of institutional learning, Progress in Planning, 174, 100749.
- Robinson Stacy-Ann, Douma Allison, Poore Tiffany, Singh Kabir (2023). The role of colonial pasts in shaping climate futures: Adaptive capacity in Georgetown, Guyana, Habitat International, 139, 102902.
- Sorensen Andre (2023). Taking critical junctures seriously: theory and method for causal analysis of rapid institutional change, Planning Perspectives, 38:5, 929-947.
The committee is delighted to announce that this year’s Best Published Paper Award goes to Stacy-Ann Robinson, Allison Douma, Tiffany Poore, and Kabir Singh for their paper entitled ‘The role of colonial pasts in shaping climate futures: Adaptive capacity in Georgetown, Guyana’ published in Habitat International.
The colonial history of many countries in the global South has impacts on urban structures, economies and societies, policy and planning frameworks. Robinson et al.’s paper provides a fascinating study of the long shadows of Dutch and British colonialism and its imprint on current planning processes, infrastructures and institutions in Georgetown, Guyana. The paper takes up the debate on colonial legacies and explores in detail the consequences of the past on current climate resilience and adaptation capabilities. Merging planning practice with broader colonial and postcolonial discourses, the authors expose the intricate challenges of implementing effective adaptation strategies. In a fresh and methodologically profound way, the paper incorporates historical, governance, and morphological insights into a cohesive narrative, and convincingly illustrates the necessary focal points for contemporary development policies and planning. Calling for long-term resilience measures and arguing the need to embrace grassroots organizations for effective actions, the authors underscore the need for transformational strategies to address urban vulnerability and provide valuable lessons on improving climate resilience. The paper stands as a remarkable contribution for planning studies, in methodological, theoretical and practice-oriented terms. 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), Asma Mehan (Texas Tech University College of Architecture, United States).
* Due to conflict of interest, Menelaos Gkartzios did not evaluate Robinson et al.’s paper.
