THEMATIC GROUPS
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Urban Futures
For the Workshop: How do we say future? in Istanbul 2026 the Deadline for applications has been extended to 16 November 2025.
The Workshop will be a co-production of the AESOP TG Urban Futures and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul. With "How do we say future?" we want to explore the ways we envision and narrate futures and how this is shaped not only by who is involved, but also by which types of tools and approaches we use, from which disciplines they originate, and for what purposes we use them? Scholars and practitioners with an interest in futuring and futuring approaches from diverse disciplines such as urban planning, architecture, visual arts, sociology, literature, communication, and technology are warmly invited to participate. The workshop will run from 2-4 February 2026 in Istanbul, Turkey, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. The workshop will accommodate a maximum of 30 participants. To ensure diversity in groups and facilitate a fair selection process, candidates are expected to submit online a brief professional account, a short motivation (300 words) of why they plan to participate, and finally an extended abstract (1500 words, references not included). All materials can be submitted via this link. Participation is free of charge. Participants will have to cover their individual expenses for travel, accommodation and sustenance. Further information can be obtained from
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Ethics, Values and Planning
Group members, save the date!
📢 ROBOTS TAKING OVER THE CITY?! CHALLENGES FOR ETHICS AND SPACE, on October 24 at 10:00 CET.
This is the first online seminar of the colloquium series (fall season) by our AESOP - Association of European Schools of Planning Thematic Group: "Ethics, Values and Planning."
🤖 While most of us can probably conjure doomsday-esque images of a robot-driven takeover (think Blade Runner, Westworld, Minority Report, Avengers: Age of Ultron), what do scholars working on the spatial and ethical implications of today’s robots in urban spaces really think is occurring? How are robots changing our current human experience of space in the city and what are the possible benefits and drawbacks?
In this seminar, Casey Lynch and Shanti Sumartojo will discuss their research on these topics and more, followed by an open Q&A with audience members.
🗓️ Date: October 24th at 10:00 CET
👩💻 Format: online via Teams (1 and a half hour)
🔗 Register here to receive the Teams link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSde6Cqg9Np12-1OTT7NWH2faeHDq6jnb-nJ5zNizriPTkdATQ/viewform
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Urban Futures
Further to our previous announcment, we are happy to open the Call for Participation!
Workshop location and format
From 2–4 February 2026 in Istanbul, Turkey, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (in picture), in collaboration with the AESOP Thematic Group Urban Futures, will organise a three-day workshop to address these questions.
Participants will engage in various workshop formats, supported by local mentors and working in smaller groups, to develop and propose new and creative futuring approaches for a local case of sea-level rise in Istanbul’s old town. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute futuring approaches they are familiar with, or interested in, and to learn from others.
As an outcome of the workshop, the question “How do we say future?” will be examined in depth, and alternative methodologies, approaches, and toolkits for both global and local contexts will be explored.
Roundtable discussions will be organised for interdisciplinary debates, and new creative approaches will be encouraged through keynotes and mentor sessions to provide a unifying platform. The meeting, enriched by the sharing of experiences related to local expertise, will feature presentations on the practices of the Marmara Municipalities Union, of which Istanbul is also a member city (https://www.marmara.gov.tr/en).
How to participate?
The workshop focuses on generating ideas and achieving results in a short period of time. The workshop will accommodate a maximum of 30 participants. To ensure diversity in groups and facilitate a fair selection process, candidates are expected to submit online a brief professional account (Google Form), a short motivation (300 words) of why they plan to participate, and finally an extended abstract (1500 words, references not included).
The extended abstract shall combine a reflection on ‘futuring’ with actual research interests, chosen theories or concepts, methodological approaches. In our own reflections on a planners’ role, futuring will be less of an issue of ‘control the future’ but rather instead to ‘midwife the future’ (Ganis 2015). Instead of knowing the exact outcomes in advance to implement a future according to ‘plan’, we might rather be looking into trajectories and possibilities. Instead of owning the future as experts with capacity to control, for instance legally, the role changes towards stewardship and place “becomes a ‘participant’ in the ‘flow of action’ and entrusts the design professional to deliver a relevant place. As such, control of the future implies that there is a fixed expectation for a place and midwifery of the future implies that there is no fixed expectation for a place; rather, the place becomes what it needs to be.” (Ganis 2015, p. 4) Early career scholars and practitioners are highly encouraged to apply, as participants are not expected to be seasoned experts regarding the futuring topics they have an interest in. The organizers plan to document the workshop results in an edited publication (with ISBN), combining group work products, expert reflections, and the individual extended abstracts coming from participants (in revised form).
The submission form and the up-load of the extended abstract can be reached through this link (copy & paste!) https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScfnq-G2V1erITAD1mrh4mxqDxU36ptDjxNDC8sucNvSXJGmg/viewform?usp=dialog
Timeline
- Submission of application form deadline: 29 October 2025
- Notification of acceptance: early December (accepted contributors will receive further information about registration and others shortly after the notification of acceptance)
- Workshop: 2-4 February 2026
Participation is free of charge - participants have to cover travel and accommodation costs.
Organisation and Contact
The event is organised by Melih Birik and Bahar Aksel from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul, Turkey (local organising team) and Manuel Caldeira (Leipzig Graduate School of Management) Germany together with the coordinators of the AESOP thematic group on Urban Futures, Peter Ache (Prof em. Radboud University, Netherlands) and Thomas Machiels (University of Antwerp, Belgium).
E-mail contact:
The full call can be found here.
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Urban Futures
A growing response to the poly-crisis in planning is futuring: practices that create futures by exploring how today’s challenges might evolve and - not least - what kinds of urban futures we desire. In recent workshops of the TG Urban Futures, and during the AESOP 2025 Congress in Istanbul, the question “Who says future?” sparked rich discussions, touching on an equally pressing question: “How do we say future?” The way we envision and narrate futures is shaped not only by who is involved, but also by which types of tools and approaches we use, from which disciplines they originate, and for what purposes we use them.
To work on these and related questions, we are curently preparing a workshop that will take place in Istanbul, running for three days on 2-4 February 2026 and hosted by Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Urban Regional Planning Department (https://msgsu.edu.tr/). Istanbul's city centre was selected as the local case for the workshop, and “The rising sea level” in the face of the climate change was chosen as the topic to guide the discussions.
Further details will be announced soon - but safe the date already!
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Planning and Complexity
INVITATION
Pre-Conference Seminar (ONLINE)
We are looking forward to the upcoming 23rd meeting of our thematic group on Planning and Complexity in Gothenburg (Sweden) on 27 and 28 November 2025. To keep us connected and inspired, we have organised an online pre-conference seminar. Open to all members of the thematic group and everyone who feels connected to the group and/or the topic. You can download the invitation as PDF file here.
Adaptive governance: systems perspectives
Kristof van Assche & Monica Gruezmacher
University of Alberta, Edmonton (Canada)
Wednesday, 1st October 2025
16.00 – 17.00 hrs CET
ONLINE in Google Meet
https://meet.google.com/sud-bgns-fmd
No registration required.
In this presentation, we interrogate the possibilities and limits of adaptive governance, by revisiting the diverse landscape of systems theories, with a special interest in social-ecological systems thinking and social systems theory, but also paying homage to the classic systems thinking of Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Kenneth Boulding. We then reinterpret adaptive governance in the frame of evolutionary governance theory (EGT), which gives central place to processes of co-evolution, and highlight the importance of epistemic negatives, i.e. non- observation, non-thinking and non-learning. We distinguish infrastructures relevant when radical adaptation is required at community level.
The event is organised by Nils Björling and the research area Local-Regional Transformations at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden (local organising team 2025) together with Christian Lamker and Jenni Partanen (thematic group coordinators).
- Hybrid lecture series: Ukraine’s European Path: Historical Legacy, Regional Development, and Future Integration
- Autumn/winter 2025 Lecture Series on Small Towns
- Registration: Contested urban policy: breeding concrete utopias - AESOP Planning/Conflict thematic group conference, Berlin, 30 September – 2 October 2025
- Call for Contributions: Co-producing alternative urban futures through experimental urbanism
