11th Young Academics Conference in Munich, Germany

Between 10 and 13 April 2017 the Chair of Urban Development at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) hosted the 11th AESOP Young Academics Conference in Munich. The Young Academics Network has more than 1.000 members – PhD students, PostDocs, as well as young practitioners – from urban planning and related fields in Europe and beyond. At the conference, 53 participants from universities in 17 countries presented 46 papers.

The theme of the conference was "Planning and Entrepreneurship - Planning and Public Policy at the Intersection of Top-down and Bottom-up Action". Among the issues discussed under this headline were the question how planning can support innovative activities, how they can react to technological start-ups moving into the realms of planning, architecture, and geo-localised data, and if they themselves can (and should) become entrepreneurs.

Four track chairs held inspiring keynotes and commented on the presentations of the participants in four tracks: Prof. Dr. em. Klaus Kunzmann (Entrepreneurial Theories and Economies of Planning), Prof Richard Kingston (Technological Innovation for Planning Practice and Research), Assoc. Prof. Dr. phil. Sabine Knierbein (Public Space as the Facilitator for Urban Innovation), and Prof. Dr. phil. Ignacio Farías (Social and Environmental Entrepreneurship for Urban Planning).

The track chairs awarded four best paper prizes, one for each track. The winning papers were "Deconstructing Chinese entrepreneurialism in urban regeneration programmes: A case study in Shanghai and Hangzhou" (Xueying Chen), "Developing a planning support system towards a collaborative planning practice. The case study of “Intramural Process” in Jerez de la Frontera (Spain)" (Irene Luque-Martín & Jorge Izquierdo-Cubero), "How media shape the perception of temporary uses. A qualitative media analysis on vacancy and temporary uses in Vienna" (Agnes Matoga) and "Professionals of the unplanned - An emerging expertise" (Camilla Guadalupi). Congratulations! The winning papers will be forwarded to DisP - The Planning Review, and proposed for publication.

The conference programme was suplemented by two workshops, on starting one's own planning enterprise, and on Actor-Network-Theory. Social events in the evening further encouraged networking.

The event was the first official AESOP conference in Germany since the first annual congress in 1988, and the first ever AESOP Young Academics meeting in Germany. The organisation team of the Chair of Urban Development were Lukas Gilliard, Fabian Wenner, and Isabel Bommes Fernández.