THEMATIC GROUPS

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Planning and Complexity

Published: 01 May 2026

Urban Complex Futures: Critical Leverage Points

An exciting workshop/conference ahead on 8-9 January 2027 in Nicosia/Cyprus on 'Complexity Unpacked: Analytical Tools & Practical Insights for Uncertain Futures'. Solon and team are busy getting everything on the ground for us - do not forget to submit your contribution latest by 15 June 2026. See full Call for Papers: https://aesop-planning.eu/tg-news/planning-and-complexity/complexity-unpacked-nicosia-cyprus-2027

We have been able to team up with a few neighbouring networks and activities - including AESOP's Thematic Group on Urban Futures - for an open exchange. A number of discussion events are coming up that can also help us feed the Cyprus event with further thoughts. More information to follow in the coming months and in summer.

Hybrid Seminar Series: Urban Complex Futures: Critical Leverage Points

The urban condition today oscillates between dystopian and utopian futures: increasing spatial segregation, political polarisation, socio-economic inequality, authoritarian governance, retrogressive and repressive national interventions are unfolding alongside a resurgence of urban agency, long-term thinking, visionary planning, collective action, community building, and the exploration of alternative futures, including post-growth paradigms, democratic innovations, and real(-istic) utopias. As time and space appear to compress further, urban discourse increasingly seeks pathways toward sustainable and equitable futures.

Our moment in time may represent an urban tipping point capable of leveraging transformations within complex, yet-to-be-understood and shaped realities. Exploring this momentum at the intersection of urban politics, spatial planning, systems thinking, and complexity theory offers a promising framework for developing, debating, and deploying concrete utopias to shape the future of our cities and regions. The aim is to seek pathways for reconciling urban politics today with potential positive future directions, connecting three established network efforts across Europe in consecutive events. The seminar series is in particular open for emerging ideas, young researchers, and students as the future drivers of democratic change.

Save the Dates:

• 15 September 2026, noon/afternoon, Groningen/hybrid
• 30 September 2026, 15.00 hrs CET, Groningen
• October 2026, online
• 11 November 2026, 15.00 hrs CET, online
• 2 December 2026, 15.00 hrs CET, online
• 8-9 January 2027, Nicosia

See full Save the Date (PDF):
https://edu.nl/vh4x8

Each event is individually organised and can be visited individually. The series is an open invitation to reflect back, discuss forward, explore futures, and initiate activities, under a joint umbrella. It does not (yet) link to a shared research project and the full series did not receive dedicated funding. Series contact: Christian Lamker, Marian Counihan

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Rural Planning

Published: 16 April 2026

Our first article introducing the Rural Planning TG appeared in disP - The Planning Review!

You can read the full article here.

It also features a photo from our first in-person meeting at the AESOP 2025 conference in Istanbul!

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Rural Planning

Published: 15 April 2026

Our spring webinar series is happening!

You can view the first webinar here: https://zoom.us/signin?_x_zm_rtaid=BKmW0dF8QcuQyJJYsYtV5g.1776288095574.46575c3a9687785e4258fd3982b16768&_x_zm_rhtaid=577#/login

The first seminar discussed neo-endogenous rural development, conceptualised in the early 2000s as an approach to rural development that is locally rooted yet outward-looking, and characterised by dynamic interactions between local areas and their wider environments.

Rather than being a theoretical and normative framework, it was a contribution that aimed to explain how things work on the ground, highlighting a dynamic urban-rural and local-global relationship, as well as various actors in the production of rural development discourse (within and beyond rural areas).

A quarter of a century later, what is the relevance of neo-endogenous rural development today? How have such approaches been adapted and evolved? And what do these contributions mean for the Global South?

In our first webinar, Prof Bettina Bock and Dr Shengxi Xin introduced spatially differentiated versions of neo-endogenous rural development and considered the implications of such theorisations for both the practice of rural development and rural planning scholarship. 

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Ethics, Values and Planning

Published: 07 April 2026

As part of its Seminar Series, the AESOP Thematic Group on Ethics, Values, and Planning is organizing an online session entitled “Spatial Segregation as a Tactic: Voluntary and Involuntary Forms of Separation in Intentional Communities.”
The seminar will feature Tore Sager Professor Emeritus from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) as the invited speaker.

In this seminar, it is aimed to explore segregation as a deliberate and tactical act in the context of intentional communities, while also questioning whether such voluntary forms of separation can ever be fully detached from involuntary or structural dynamics. By focusing on intentional communities’ self-chosen spatial strategies and their ethical and political implications, the session seeks to open a broader discussion on autonomy, exclusion, and the ethics of spatial separation.
The seminar is inspired by Prof. Sager’s paper “Planning by Intentional Communities: An Understudied Form of Activist Planning,” as well as by his extensive scholarship on ethics, planning theory, and communicative approaches. His work provides an ideal foundation for examining how intentional communities can be understood as actors of activist planning and how their spatial practices raise critical ethical questions for planning theory and practice.

The session will consist of a 30-minute presentation by the invited speaker, followed by a 20-minute open discussion with the audience.
Date: March 20, 2026
Time: 15:00 CET
Format: Online via Teams (50 minutes)