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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Planning and Complexity

Published: 02 April 2024

28-29 November 2024, RWTH Aachen University

Time is too often a peripheral element in scholarly and practical discourses. It is frequently treated as a neutral background factor instead of an active force that shapes cities and their planning. However, complex socio-spatial systems continuously evolve and transform over time in ways that are sometimes predictable, and others spontaneous; sometimes slow, and others fast. Planners are at the frontline of this change, and yet, how well do they understand or leverage wisdom about time? 

This conference seeks to deepen our understanding of intricate socio-spatial configurations and changes by studying their timing, speed, sequence, durability, and the enduring or fleeting impacts they leave. It welcomes the exploration of dynamics and methodologies characterized by time-sensitive interests. It invites scholars with interdisciplinary backgrounds to delve into innovative analytical, design, and planning methods that can empower planners, policymakers, and designers to better understand and use time in addressing contemporary urban challenges and opportunities across various scales.

Possible avenues for submissions include (in alphabetical order):

Sensing: This encompasses various dimensions of ‘sensing’ such as spatial, corporeal, cognitive, mediated, and technological aspects. We explore the points of convergence among diverse perspectives and approaches, the representation or mission of whose sensing, and the implications for sensing and sense-making. How can we capture and conceptualize diverse socio-spatial rhythms, layers, and processes of change that give rise to distinct and recognizable patterns? Access to new forms of data and technologies is a crucial aspect of this discussion.

Planning: Developing effective temporal awareness to use planning actions that are sensitive to timing, speed, and (un)expected effects is a real challenge. Rooted in longstanding ideas and practices, planning interventions and debates are often driven by present urgencies but struggle to keep pace with continuous changes. How can we point towards socio-spatial transformations that often transgress dominant timeframes? The focus here is the exploration of modes or methods for policymaking and strategies for spatial governance.

Designing: Design processes that prioritize time navigate the delicate balance between providing optimal short-term solutions and addressing long-term unpredictable dynamics. We are interested in unraveling the time-sensitive tensions that affect design logic and exploring design frameworks that can accommodate complexity. To what extent do current design ideals and practices perpetuate limitations in our understanding of the temporal dimension? The composition of the built and natural environments along with their rules are central aspects of this question.

Submission details

• Target audience: Early career researchers (e.g. PhD candidates) and seniors (e.g. Professors, Seniors Researchers), practitioners with scholars' interest
• Abstract Length: up to 350 words
• Keywords: Provide 3-5 keywords relevant to your submission
• References: Provide 3-5 major references relevant to your submission
• Abstract Submission Deadline: June 9, 2024
• Extended Abstracts Submission & Registration Deadline: mid-late October 2024

Submission

Submit via https://forms.gle/w5XQxQnr7yUZ1Ehc7

Contact

The event is organised by Robin Chang, Fabio Bayro Kaiser and Stefano Cozzolino (local organising team 2024), with support from Christian Lamker and Ward Rauws (thematic group coordinators). Contact via email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Logo/poster design by Esther Padberg (RWTH Aachen)

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures

Published: 06 February 2024

 The report following this symposium is available here.

The fifth event of the two-year period 2022-2024 on the working theme ‘Public Spaces, Urban Cultures, and Constructing Peace’ will take place in Nicosia, Cyprus on 30 and 31 May 2024. It will be an in-presence symposium entitled ‘Constructing Peace through Public Space: What publics? Whose commons?’ The symposium will be organized at the Goethe Institute and Home for Cooperation in the Buffer Zone of Nicosia, Cyprus.

Aim of the Symposium

The symposium aims to examine the relationships between the publics and peace-building processes in contested cities, with the intention to answer the following questions:

• How do we create spaces for conciliation to transform conflicts constructively?
• How does the active agency of the urban environment support or cancel out conciliation processes?
• Should public space be taken for granted, or should it be part of creating common ground in deeply divided societies?
• What is the role of civil societies and bottom-up initiatives?
• How do commoning practices support the diversity of publics in peacebuilding and related planning processes?
• Can urban challenges of common concern regarding social-ecological transformations (climate and other crises) trigger such commoning practices, and how?

Why Cyprus?

The location of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean offers a unique venue at the confluence of three continents and a multitude of cultures that face such unique challenges. Many of these challenges are the result of not only long-standing local issues but also of issues that have emanated from recent conflicts in the surrounding region. The island in general and Nicosia, a divided European capital with a prolonged history of conflict, internal refugees' displacements, migration and tourist flows, economic fluctuations, and rapid, often abrupt urban transformations, serve as an ideal laboratory to explore, unravel, and question public space development in unstable and contested contexts. The local urban context provides a valuable case study and can unveil the complexity of all the factors that condition the various forms of public space in contemporary contested, continuously transformed contexts.

The Symposium Format

The Cyprus symposium comprises two-day activities that bring together scholars, activists, and spatial practitioners who deal with peacebuilding and conflict transformation through spatial measures. It is organized in roundtable workshops that will summon diverse participants who will share their work based on the above-mentioned questions. The layout of the roundtable workshops aims to foster constructive discussion and exchange among the participants. Some workshops will be ambulant, exposing the participants to the Nicosia contested context. Thus, the participation format will be open to encourage a diversity of means and ends to populate the roundtable debates.

Who can Participate?

Scholars, activists, and spatial practitioners who deal with peacebuilding and conflict transformation through public space and material practices are invited to participate.

Format of Participation

Short interventions in the form of oral presentations or videos (10-15 minutes).

Submissions

A submission including the title, authors' names, authors' affiliation and email address, 3-5 keywords, an abstract of max 200 words, and max 4 images (JPEG 300 dpi as separate files) and captions should be sent to the following e-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Important Dates

• 2 February 2024 Open call for participation
• 1 March 2024 Deadline for participation interests
• 8 March 2024 Participation approvals
• 1 May 2024 Program announcement Symposium
• 30-31 May 2024 Symposium
• 1 July 2024 Submission of full papers
• September 2024 Publication

Publications

The symposium findings, including all presentations and discussions during the symposium, will be published online following the event. The book of abstracts will also be published pre-symposium. Both publications will have ISBNs.

Scientific Committee

Evangelia Athanassiou, Nadia Charalambous, Sabine Knierbein, Sebnem Hoskara, Socrates Stratis

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures

Published: 06 February 2024

Urban space and everyday life are permeated with asymmetrical, complex and contested relationships, which are indicative of and are intertwined with challenges of political representation, ecological and economic crises, social and cultural exclusion, as well as struggles in accessing healthcare, education and social services. Simultaneously they also channel hopes, needs and desires for collectively negotiated social orders.  

According to Fraser (2022), the hierarchical division between the production as an expression of neoliberal, post-fordist and patriarchal society and the reproduction that is traditionally associated with care activities requires profound rethinking in terms of value extraction and value generation in the contemporary city. She highlights that the regime of neo-liberal capitalism extracts value from everyday life in a process of reconfiguration and commodification of social reproduction and its spatialization.  To overcome this, a collaborative mindset is needed. Urban commons, in their multiple configurations, embrace projects and practices that inspire novel forms of spatial justice and inclusive society. They express the entanglements among spaces, communities, and governing models. The unceasing process of reconfiguration of the geography of people, activities and rules of self-organization, typical of the commoning process, is based on mutual recognition, shared values, openness, mutualism and care. The three items (commoning, community, space) are equally necessary to the creation of commons, moving towards enabling policies and enabling spaces. 

Call for Papers

This call is edited by Chiara Belingardi (LaPEI - University of Florence), Gabriella Esposito De Vita, Stefania Ragozino (Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development - National Research Council of Italy), Tihomir Viderman (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg), and is one of the outputs of the AESOP TG PSUC Conference Naples 2023 "Urban Conflicts and Peace: Everyday Politics of Commons" (https://aesop-planning.eu/tg-news/public-spaces-and-urban-cultures/aesop-tg-psuc-conference-naples-urban-conflicts-and-peace-everyday-politics-of-commons). It aims to collect theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that deal with the concepts of urban commons and care, with the focus on (but not restricted to) the following topics:

1. Production of commons - production of values; 

2. Care as a social activity and public responsibility; 

3. Everyday politics of urban commons; 

4. Enabling spaces, enabling policies; 

5. Conflict and resistance to urban extractivism; 

6. Commons and (agro)ecologies for territorial regeneration; 

7. Urban Commoning by care strategies; 

8. Women and queer women for urban resistance.

Contributions have to be submitted by March, 31 2024 at the following link: 

https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/contesti/about/submissions

Contesti. Città, Territori, Progetti is the Journal of Regional and Urban Planning, studies and design of the Architecture Department of Florence University. It represents since many years a credited voice in the field of the urban and regional studies and of the related policies and practices of planning and design. Through its sections, Contesti accounts for a plurality of topics and studies, research/action, policies, planning and design experiences with the aim to render in reflexive and critical terms the multifaceted complexity of the transformative processes that affects built environment and human settlements.

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Urban Transformation in Europe and China

Published: 31 January 2024

Organized by Xin Yi, Uwe Altrock,  Xinru Xie and Wenyue Li, in collaboration with further TG members During 2023, the group was coordinated by Xin Yi

Introduction

The thematic group, China’s urban transformation, focuses the knowledge exchange between Chinese and European urban expertise on urban transformation processes, especially comparing urban regeneration practice in Europe and China. It was established in April 2019 with the initiative of Xin Yi (Associate Professor, Southeast University, China), Uwe Altrock (Professor, University of Kassel, Germany) and Klaus R. Kunzmann (Professor emeritus, TU Dortmund, Germany)

The aim of the thematic group is to learn from European and Chinese experience, both successes. It will confront European participants with the challenges of urban regeneration in Chinese cities, and it will give Chinese practitioners and academic planners an insight into regeneration practices in the different European countries, such as UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and Austria, etc. Since the beginning of the 21st century China and Europe are getting closer and closer. European enterprises are making more and more business in China, and more and more Chinese enterprises are investing in Europe. Tourists from Europe and China like to explore the respective other region. The one-road-one belt Initiative, driven by the Chinese government is reducing geographic distance and transport time.

Since the foundation in 2019, the Group started to organize different events in relations to urban transformation in Europe and China with cooperation of practitioners, academics, governmental and non-governmental professionals, and further interest groups into the TG’s activities.

Internal organization of the group

A collective made up of group members organizes the activities of the Thematic Group. Some of the tasks of the core group are: to establish the Group’s agenda (working topics, meetings); to prepare meetings and annual reports; to disseminate scientific results; to promote a strong involvement into research and publication affairs; as well as towards a broader audience and the AESOP Secretary General.

The list of members who managed the Group’s activities in 2023 (in alphabetic order):

Qi Huang (Germany), Xinru Xie (China), Ao Sun (China), Jin Duan (China), Yang Wang (China), Davide Ponzini (Italy), Xin Yi (China), Uwe Altrock (Germany) Klaus R. Kunzmann (Germany), Yige Li (China) , Xiaohong Tan (China), Zhiqing Zhao (China), Zhiming Li (China), Hao Lin (China), Zijing Wu (China) and Xinyi Chen (China),

The list of members who (co-)organized meetings in 2023:

Event 1

5th International conference on people-oriented urban design.

– Online & offline conference, 4th - 5th November, Nanjing, China.

Remy Sietchiping (UN Habitat), Klaus Kunzmann (Germany), Jonathan Barnett (USA), Bernhard Müller (Germany), Paulina Schiappacasse (Germany), Corinne Jaquand (French), Christopher Knabe (Germany), Michael Krieger (Germany), Duan Jin (China), Wang Yin (China), Zhan Erpeng (China), Jiang Hong (China), Liu Bomin (China), Zhang Chunyang (China), Wang Chenghui (China), Wang Tianqing (China), Wei Haoyan (China), Yuan Yuan  (China), Chang Jiang (China), Zhao Hongyu (China), Fan Li (China), Liu Yiwei (China), Huang He (China), Chen Xiaodong (China), Hou Xin (China), Tao Tao (China), Zhang Ning (China), Yi Xin (China), Shi Yi (China), Long Yan (China), Song Gang (China)

On 4th - 5th November, 2023, the 5rd International Conference on People-Oriented Urban Design was held in Nanjing. The conference was hosted and organized by Southeast University and co-organized by Urban Transformation in Europe and China Thematic Group (AESOP). The conference was held in mixed way of online and offline meeting, with internationally renowned scholars from the UN Habitat, Germany, United States, France and other countries, as well as Experts from China. The institutions are as following: UN Habitat, Technical University of Dortmund (Germany), The École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville (France), Technical University of Dresden (Germany), OBERMEYER group (Germany), Pesch Partner Architektur Stadtplanung GmbH (Germany), Dialoge für die Energiewende (Germany) and Chinese universities and institutions, such as Southeast University, Beijing Urban Planning and Design Institute, Qingdao Sino-German Exchange Association, South China University of Technology, Qingdao Urban Planning and Design Institute, Chongqing University, Sun Yat-sen University, China University of Mining and Technology, Jilin Jianzhu University, Tongxin Urban Renewal Education Foundation , Tsinghua University, Tianjin University, Shenzhen Leo Planning and Design Consulting Co., Ltd., Urban Design Center of Hangzhou Planning and Design Institute and other major urban planning authorities and research institutes across the country, Experts, scholars and students from domestic and foreign planning and design units attended the meeting.

In this conference, experts and scholars from various countries shared the latest information and technical research results in the field of international urban design, discussed technology docking and cooperation, and summarized the international experience in the field of urban design success and failure. Multidisciplinary integration is the characteristic of people-oriented urban design. With the development of digital technology, people-oriented urban design is developing in the direction of full-scale, full-element, and full-chain in the historical environment. Therefore, we look forward to the deep integration of digital technology and people-oriented urban design.

Event 2

Digital Protection of Historical Heritage—Five Schools Joint Workshop

17th - 24th July, 2023, Shenyang, China

This workshop was hosted and organized by Shenyang Jianzhu University and co-organized by Urban Transformation in Europe and China Thematic Group (AESOP) in a combination of online and offline methods.

More than 90 teachers and students from Shenyang Jianzhu University, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Lanzhou University of Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Southwest University for Nationalities participated in this event. During the workshop, teachers and students who participated in the activity went to the national historical and cultural village of Shifosi in Shenyang to conduct on-site research. They used drone 3D scanning technology to conduct on-site teaching of real-life modeling methods of historical heritage, and carried out on-site teaching on the village situation of Shifosi Village. Maung conducted on-site visits and held 6 special academic reports on the digital protection of historical heritage within the campus, and carried out the conceptual design of the Stone Buddha Temple in groups. During the joint learning process, students from the five schools deeply appreciated the technological charm of digital technology and deeply thought about the relationship between digitalization and professional practice.

Event 3

Annual conference of digital technology research center for historical cities of Chinese Society for Urban Studies (CSUS)

18th - 19th December, 2023, Nanjing, China

Cao Changzhi, Dong Wei, Dang Anrong, Huang Xianfeng, He Jie, Chunqing, Li Yang, Zhang Lihai, Ma Xiaosu, Lu Xu, Yi Xin, Zhai Fei

On 18th - 19th November, 2023, the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Digital Cities Department of the Historical and Cultural Cities Committee of the Chinese Society for Urban Science was held in Shenyang. This conference was hosted and organized by Shenyang Jianzhu University and co-organized by Urban Transformation in Europe and China Thematic Group (AESOP) in a combination of online and offline methods. Experts and scholars gathered at Shenyang Jianzhu University to discuss the protection, renewal, utilization and inheritance of historical cities supported by digital technology in the new era. On November 19, the Digital Protection of Historical Heritage - Five-University Joint Workshop Results Exchange Meeting was held in the lecture hall on the second floor of the Architecture Museum of Shenyang Jianzhu University. Participants came from Shenyang Jianzhu University, Southwest University for Nationalities, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Lanzhou University of Science and Technology. Teachers and students from the university participated in this workshop.

Future Action Plan in 2024

1. Annual conference of digital technology research center for historical cities of Chinese Society for Urban Studies (CSUS). July 2024, Lanzhou, China.

2. 6th international conference on people-oriented Urban Design. November 2024, Nanjing, China.