The final session of the AESOP Congress 2025 will culminate in a Closing Panel titled "Reimagining Planning: Institutions, Politics, and the Urgency of Now", offering a moment of collective reflection on this year’s overarching theme: "Planning as a Transformative Action in an Age of Planetary Crisis."
Bringing together three leading scholars in the field — Simin Davoudi, Erik Swyngedouw, and Willem Salet — the panel will critically engage with the tensions, contradictions, and possibilities that shape contemporary planning practice and theory. From institutional reflexivity and relational approaches, to political ecology and contested governance spaces, each speaker will contribute distinct perspectives on how planning can respond meaningfully to the intersecting environmental, social, and institutional crises of our time.
Rather than providing final answers, the Closing Panel will open up key questions for the planning community:
What does transformation mean in an age of deep uncertainty?
What new forms of planning practice, institutional change, and political imagination are needed?
How can planners act ethically and responsibly in the face of planetary challenges?
All Congress participants are warmly invited to join this final conversation, helping to shape the future directions of planning scholarship and practice.
