"Impacts of the COVID19 pandemic on the planning profession: Reactions and responses from academia and practice."

We invite you to send your abstracts to the YA Special Session:

"Impacts of the COVID19 pandemic on the planning profession: Reactions and responses from academia and practice."

Organiser(s):

Pinar Dörder, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Dr. Ledio Allkja, Polis University, Albania

We invite papers by planning scholars and practitioners to our Special Session to join our discussion on the planning and pandemic interface. The session aims to discuss the impact of the pandemic on the planning profession and understand the extent to which the planning discipline has effectively reacted and responded to the crisis. Resilience and systems thinking build on the presumption that crises have transformative power and are therefore windows of opportunity. But as the global spread of the Sars-CoV-2 virus has shown us, a crisis alone does not inherently bring about a positive change. On the contrary, we have been witnessing that the pandemic is impacting the disadvantaged, racialized, unemployed, and inadequately housed portions of the societies the most. The questions, among others, that could inspire a dynamic discussion include:

What tools does the planning discipline provide us with to adequately respond to this wake-up-call?
In what ways can planning become more adaptive to embrace the complex and uncertain environments it operates in?
What are the lessons learnt on the basis of 'good' and 'not-so-good' practices?

The discussion we aim to initiate will have a broad focus on how planning is being impacted by the current crisis and how it can respond to it in return. Therefore, the above list of questions gives a general direction only and is not intended to put any limitation. All related contributions are welcome.

Take a look at the RSA E-Festival 'Regions in Recovery' special sessions on this link: https://www.regionalstudies.org/news/202-ssrinr/#!

Register and submit abstracts through this link: https://members.regionalstudies.org/lounge/Meetings/Meeting?ID=307

Be encouraged to apply for the bursaries until March 15th: https://www.regionalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Bursary-Guidelines-Regions-in-Recovery-v4.pdf