THEMATIC GROUPS
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Urban Futures
New Application DL: 14 October 2026
How do urban futures flow?
Multiple, interconnected challenges are unfolding simultaneously. Climate change, environmental degradation, technological shifts, rapid urbanisation, migration, and geopolitical instability are reshaping cities and urban life. Planners play a crucial role in co-shaping urban futures through transformative action that addresses today’s rapidly evolving needs while safeguarding the needs of future generations. This task is complicated by the unpredictability and uncontrollability of current challenges, whose outcomes are difficult—if not impossible—to anticipate or steer.
The workshop "How do urban futures flow?" will focus on the application of futuring and related transformative processes to a highly relevant and pressing issue in urban futures: flows. Urban flows describe the movement of people, goods, energy, information and services through the city and how they shape urban form, governance and everyday life. Especially considering the disruptive changes in the technological underpinnings of both urban artifacts (e.g., autonomous mobility, on-demand transportation, physical internet) and information management (e.g., Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, digital twins), the application of futuring to this topic is of utmost importance.
We invite scholars from the fields of futuring, urban flows, mobility, logistics, smart cities, planning and design, and all related and intersectoral fields. We also welcome practitioners and other professionals with interest on the topic. 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.
Submit your application by 30 September 2026 via this submission form (+ information below)
Scope and Theme
This workshop will combine the problematics of urban flows with that of futuring.
Futuring will be less of an issue of ‘control the future’, implying a fixed expectation, but rather instead to ‘midwife the future’, in which there is no fixed expectation (Ache, 2017; 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 (Hillier & Healey, 2016). In this context, planners are seen not as linear and order-setting parts, but as complex cognitively charged individuals who carry an individual and partial mental representation, and as part of a two-way selforganizing process between physical environments and mental representations (Portugali, 2011).
Similar articulations of two-way, bottom-up processes can be found in tangential, yet relevant and pertinent, organizational literature (Weick, 1988, Sirolli, 1999). Futuring aims to understand how we try to predict or imagine the future in cities, what old and new approaches and tools are relevant, what vocabulary is needed to capture different, more transformative futures, and what kind of knowledge is relevant. In the midst of these questions, there has been a call for an "advocate planner" figure who not only amplifies voices in shaping the future, but also develops new literacies to articulate them.
The urban flows lens will translate futuring’s macro scope into concrete questions about how flows might be reorganised, intensified, constrained or re-valued - always in view of future cities as a ‘collective oeuvre’ (Lefebvre) benefitting all citizens. Urban flows present a twofold problem for the future of the urban environment. On the one hand, the future of urban flows depends on technological advancements being implemented to adapt to societies’ call for more sustainable futures. On the other hand, human behaviour itself is changing, with significant consequences for the movements, routines, interruptions and encounters that make urban life habitable. This twoway relationship provides an endless source of reflection. Many flows co-exist, come together, influence each other, and must be reconsidered when thinking of transformative futures to create thriving, inclusive, socially just, and sustainable cities and urban areas:
● People: The city has traditionally been a place where newcomers settle. Growth and decline in cities are directly related to the coming and going of people with different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. One of the most difficult things to anticipate when considering urban futures are how people’s preferences and behaviour will change. Flows of people, where they settle, live, recreate, shop, work, interact with people and nature, and work, influence and are affected by the spatial structure of all these activities.
● Mobility and transportation: Urban mobility and transportation flows move people, goods, and services, and are at the same time constantly affected by changing housing, work or recreational preferences, economic principles, and new technologies. Some cities are shifting away from car-centric layouts, prioritizing sustainable, multimodal networks and digital technologies to enable sustainable mobility systems. Add to that the challenge of spatially integrating evolving solutions like autonomous vehicles, shared mobility, and on-demand services in mobility and transportation flows.
● Goods and services: Modern cities almost exclusively rely on the import of resources like food to meet their daily basic needs. At the same time, cities are clusters of industrial production, service provision, or creative industries. Digitalisation adds layers of growing e-commerce and changing consumer preferences. The flows of incoming, outgoing, and internal goods and services rely on centralized infrastructure, logistics nodes, and decentralized "last-mile" delivery networks. Circular principles are becoming increasingly important to shorten supply chains and facilitate sustainable economic urban systems.
● Data and information: Data flows in cities represent the digital and physical exchange of information, people, and resources that keep urban environments operational. These systems synthesize inputs like traffic metrics, energy consumption, and human mobility to streamline city management and improve citizen well-being. The impact of different data sensing and governance models (e.g. corporate, municipal and commons), and the increasing digitalisation (e.g. the Internet of Things, smart cities and digital twins) impacts how urban space is interpreted, remembered, governed and trusted.
● Water and biota: Water proves to be a crucial system for the city, and that system will become increasingly manifest due to climate change. Whereas many cities created hard barricades between water and the rest of the city, or even covered up rivers and streams, integrating water flows within urban areas and living with water is becoming an important strategy to protect communities against the consequences of climate change. Furthermore, biota or living organisms like flora and fauna are crucial for biodiversity, and rely on both blue and green infrastructure networks to move, grow, and thrive.
● Energy: Energy flows are closely connected spatial and economic structures. In many modern cities, energy networks still rely strongly on fossil fuel flows. The energy transition require a rethinking of our energy infrastructure, power networks, and energy flows, require sustainable and renewable sources, and spatial structures to facilitate this transition.
Workshop location and format
From 1 to 3 February 2027 in Porto, Portugal, the Research Centre for Territory, Transports and Environment (CITTA), 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. They will develop and propose new and creative futuring approaches for urban and flow planning in the city of Porto, while engaging in a broader discussion of how the local lessons can inform general key learning about the future of urban flows. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute futuring and similar approaches they are familiar with, or interested in, and to learn from others.
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 different entities, including the Porto Municipality and the Maritime Port Authority.
The question “How do urban futures flow?” will be examined in depth, and alternative methodologies, approaches, and toolkits for both global and local contexts will be explored.
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 a brief professional account (submission form), including a short statement of motivation on how the workshop resonates with your own work or interests (300 words) and an extended abstract regarding your actual research or practice project and how it relates and can contribute to the workshop (750 words, references not included).
The organisers 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 and the upload of the extended abstract can be done via this submission form.
The deadline for submission is 30 September 2026.
Programme
- Day 1 (1 February, 9:30-18:00): welcome and opening of the workshop, keynote speech, presentations by the invited institutions, group discussion, group formation, recreational visit;
- Day 2 (2 February, 9:30-18:00): groups introduction and first discussion on the project theme (e.g. Method 635), workshop session and general discussion;
- Day 3 (3 February, 9:30-17:00): Final proposals of the participant groups for the local case (Toolkits for the local case and further reflection on “How do urban futures flow?”), short presentation of each group and closing panel session.
The programme may be subject to change. A detailed, final programme will be published closer to the start of the workshop.
Timeline
- Submission of application form deadline: 30 September 2026
- Notification of acceptance: end of October (accepted contributors will receive further information about registration and others shortly after the notification of acceptance)
- Workshop: 1-3 February 2027
Participation fee
Participation is subject to a €35 registration fee, payable upon acceptance. The organisation will provide lunch and coffee breaks. Financial support for travel or accommodation will not be provided.
Organisation and contact
The event is organised by Manuel Caldeira, Sara Cruz and .lvaro Costa from the Faculty of Engineering of Porto University (local organising team), 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:
References
Ache, P. (2017). Vision Making in Large Urban Settings: Unleashing Anticipation? In Handbook of Anticipation (pp. 1–21). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31737-3_43-1
Ganis, M. (2015). Planning Urban Places: Self-Organising Places with People in Mind. Routledge & CRC Press. https://www.routledge.com/Planning-Urban-Places-Self-Organising-Places-with-Peoplein-Mind/Ganis/p/book/9781138297029
Hillier, J., & Healey, P. (2016). Foundations of the Planning Enterprise: Critical Essays in Planning Theory: Volume 1. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Foundations-of-the-Planning-Enterprise-Critical-Essays-in-Planning-Theory-Volume-1/Healey-Hillier/p/book/9780754627197
Portugali, J. (2011). Complexity, Cognition and the City. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19451-1
Sirolli, E. (1999). Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship, and the Rebirth of Local Economies. New Society Publishers.
Weick, K. E. (1988). Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situations. Journal of Management Studies, 25(4), 305–317. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1988.tb00039.x
Weick, K. E. (1998). Introductory Essay—Improvisation as a Mindset for Organizational Analysis. Organization Science, 9(5), 543–555. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.9.5.543
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
The Spatial Life of Trauma: Public Space, Memory and Future-Making
Edited by:
Dimitra Kanellopoulou, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais, PSL Université, Ambiances Architectures Urbanités Research Laboratory (UMR1563) - CRESSON Team,
Christine Mady, Department of Architecture, School of ARTS, Aalto University,
This volume advances public space scholarship by treating trauma not as a discrete aftermath but as a cumulative, time-space process produced, sensed, negotiated, and potentially transformed in the public realm. It addresses the continuum before, during, and after rupture and traces how intersecting vulnerabilities that appear individual at the time t0 become collective at the time t1. In doing so, it reframes public space from a backdrop for memorials and reconstruction to a medium through which traumatisation and care unfold.
The rationale is twofold. First, existing trauma scholarship - rooted in psychology, memory studies, post-conflict, and catastrophe studies - privileges post-event narratives and monumentalised traces. Second, the “soft,” often invisible registers of harm in everyday urban life remain under-specified: anticipatory stressors, mundane disruptions, and patterned exposures that accrete across bodies, infrastructure, and governance. Repositioning trauma as a public space process matters because it shifts planning and design from reactive response to anticipatory care, clarifies power in naming “what counts” as trauma, and supports equity-centred, early-action policy.
The volume contributes at three levels. Conceptually, it develops temporal-spatial lenses and thresholds for identifying trauma as a public space issue, foregrounding power, justice, and unequal vulnerability in accumulation paths. Methodologically, it advances ways to detect ongoing or obscured traumatising processes - through ethnography, sensory and participatory mapping, spatial and environmental analytics, archival counter-readings, and practice-based protocols for early warning, everyday maintenance, and small-scale repair - alongside ethical frameworks for study and representation. Empirically and for policy, it assembles comparative cases across geographies and trauma types (structural, colonial, environmental/climate, conflict-related), evaluates how design and governance generate or mitigate vulnerability, and assesses interventions that move from memorialisation toward infrastructural care.
Why now?
This edited volume treats trauma as a cumulative, time-space process negotiated in and through public space, rather than a discrete event to be overcome. While trauma scholarship spans multiple disciplines, translation into planning, design, and governance remains limited. We propose public space as a shared framework for recognising how trauma is differentially produced, acknowledged, and lived across identities (age, gender, race), scales (body, street, neighbourhood, city), and temporalities (past, present, and anticipated futures). This framing can guide policy and design and support the development of indicators for the caring, reparative, and regenerative capacities of public spaces.
Against celebratory narratives of resilience, the volume foregrounds ambiguity, accumulation, struggle, power negotiation, and unfinished recovery, and interrogates how dominant discourses sideline justice and unequal vulnerability. We live amid overlapping traumas – pandemics, ecological disasters, large-scale accidents, wars, and displacement – whose effects endure in everyday urban life. Public spaces are often the first settings where such harms become visible and collectively lived.
Despite extensive research on crisis and conflict, the ordinary, recurrent traumatising processes that manifest in public space - deprivation of basic needs and rights, harassment, exclusion, homelessness, discrimination, microaggressions - remain underexamined, as does the capacity of public space to address them. These accumulations often shape mobility, belonging, and participation more than exceptional disasters. We, therefore, centre public space as a site of care, inclusion, repair, and the avoidance of re-traumatisation, and situate this within spatial justice and power dynamics across historical, structural, and more-than-human relations. Emerging climate- and technology-related traumas intensify these dynamics, are spatially embedded and unevenly distributed, and demand attention to embodied, everyday experience.
Our guiding question is: how can public space support living with uncertainty, loss, and ecological transformation? The answers should inform anticipatory, equity-oriented strategies that mitigate traumatising processes and expand entitlement to the city – being part of, moving through, and benefiting from urban life. We call on architecture, urban design, and planning to reorient from growth-led delivery to vocabularies and practices of abatement, care, maintenance, repair, and regeneration, recognising that recovery often proceeds through sustained, small-scale, and accumulative interventions.
Background
Trauma is an intrinsically multidisciplinary field. Emerging from psychoanalysis and psychiatry, it now spans psychology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, history and memory studies, political science, geography, architecture, and related domains. Positioning itself within trauma studies as a cross-disciplinary formation (Ward and Pilat, 2016), this volume embraces an inter- and transdisciplinary approach.
We approach trauma as a biopsychosocial phenomenon with neurological, physiological, psychological, social, and cultural dimensions. It alters threat detection, memory, executive function, emotion regulation, and stress responses, and it reshapes social relations, cultural narratives, political conflict, urban space, and collective memory. Following psychoanalytic accounts (Caruth, 1995), trauma exceeds narrative integration, resists immediate representation, and returns as fragmentation, repetition, and temporal collapse – an unsettled present rather than a completed past.
The literature identifies individual, collective, intergenerational, structural, environmental and climate-related forms, showing trauma as embedded in social, political, cultural, and physical structures. Its dimensions are psychological (dread, intrusive memories, disordered identity), social (erosion and reconfiguration of trust and ties, alongside resilience), spatial (inscribed in landscapes, ruins, memorials; cities as mnemonic terrains that preserve and erase traces: Gilloch and Kilby, 2005; Boyer, 1996; Hebbert, 2005), political (terrorism, state violence, security, reconstruction; reverberations in policy and governance: Ward and Pilat, 2016), and cultural (film, literature, monuments, ritual; e.g., Palestinian cinema reconstructing fractured memory while acknowledging irreparable loss: Gertz and Khleifi, 2008), as well as corporeal and temporal (neurophysiological effects; compression of past and present through delay and recurrence). In public space these dimensions are co-present and mutually shaping.
Although trauma follows no single trajectory, it is often characterised by recurring processes - including the accumulation of triggers, moments of rupture - which overwhelm cognitive and social frames, periods of latency, the return of trauma through symptoms and cultural forms, and social practices - like grieving, memorialisation, storytelling, post-memory, and reconstruction that seek to incorporate traumatic experience. Closure is rare; trauma remains open-ended, renegotiated through politics, art, ritual, and alterations to public space. Accordingly, this volume examines how public spaces shape and are reshaped by collective trauma (war, colonial violence, terrorism, ecological disaster, systemic injustice), or seemingly individual trauma, and argues for public space as active infrastructure of care, maintenance, and repair responsive to trauma’s cumulative and staged condition.
The volume and its parts
The volume asks:
- Who decides how, by whom and for how long, trauma is remembered or forgotten through lived and shared experiences in public space?
- How do public spaces absorb/ hide, represent, reflect, resist, or reveal traumatic experiences and processes? What are the risks of normalising or anaesthetising traumatic experiences?
- How can everyday public space practices contribute to negotiating trauma and creating conditions of care and transformation?
- How can public spaces anticipate future ruptures and address their root causes and
These questions are addressed through the volume’s four interconnected parts.
Part 1. Recognising and naming trauma in public space
Part 1 focuses on how trauma becomes spatially legible and asks when, how, and by whom a site is recognised as a traumatised or traumatising space. Rather than considering trauma as a self-evident condition, this part addresses the politics of recognition, who labels an event, experience or condition as traumatic who is entitled to do so and who has the power to deny, erase, hide, or normalise it? Recognition can be understood as a process; trauma is first identified, then its existence knowledge, and only then potentially addressed. Yet, who initiates this process of searching, identifying, and naming? Communities, individuals, public institutions, experts, activists and other actors may play different and sometimes conflicting roles. Contributions to this part are therefore invited to examine the actor’s network to make traumatic experiences publicly perceptible. The part considers recognition and acknowledgement as possible starting points for individual and collective continuations and for the construction of possible future trajectories. It asks how public space participates in making trauma visible, and when the recognition of a traumatised, or actively traumatising space creates the possibility for it to be addressed.
Part 2. Remembering trauma: transmission, commemoration, and ethics of visibility
Part 2 examines how public space transmit, perform, materialise or erase traumatic memory. It questions the presence of the past in the present and examines the role of public space in keeping trauma active, discontinuing traumatic processed, or transforming the way in which traumatic experiences are transmitted. Societies have long used public space to materialise memory through monuments, memorials and commemorative landscapes. This part extends these established debates towards new arenas in which new concepts of memory and commemoration emerge and operate differently: counter monuments, temporary and performative memorial practices, digital extensions of memorial space, everyday rituals, artistic practices and events. Rather than understand memory as something fixed in material form, the section approaches memory as something people do. Memories shift, overlap and change overtime and public spaces provide fertile grounds through which they are continually performed and transmitted. Contributions may address practices developed in specific public spaces to recall or commemorate trauma and to prevent its repetition, as well as the pedagogical role of public space; can public space teach? How is traumatic memory transmitted between individuals, communities and generations? Simultaneously, the part critically examines the dynamics, of commodification and the transformation of particular places into landmarks of trauma. It asks how commemoration, consumption, tourism, and public visibility intersect and potentially alter the meaning of traumatic experience.
Part 3. Negotiating trauma: everyday practices of care and transformation
Part 3 shifts attention from trauma as a discrete event towards trauma as a lived and ongoing condition. It explores how trauma is experienced and constantly re-negotiated through everyday life, privileging the mundane public places and subtle experiences beyond the material traces of tragic occurrences. This part focuses on the difference between trauma as event and trauma as condition, for example, environmental, technological and infrastructural conditions. Public spaces are locations where trauma is always being renegotiated. Contestation, protest and occupation are key expressions of this negotiation, where conflicting actors strive to impose alternative notions of significance, meaning or public recognition of painful experience. Post-trauma policing, control and securitisation illustrate how responses to trauma reshape everyday public life, while contestation is only one mode of negotiation. Equally important are spatial practices like avoidance, appropriation, adaptability, perseverance, informal gathering and mutual care. Part 3 looks at how everyday activities can both express trauma and generate circumstances for identification, care and transformation. Contributions to this part examine the scales of traumatic experience (geographical, chronological, physiological and experiential), the significance of the everyday compared to exceptional events, and explore trauma-informed planning, design and architecture, grassroots rebuilding projects, artistic performances, community participation and everyday practices of care. These could be explored using cases on emerging practices, actors initiating them, resulting transformations or sticking points to question how public spaces contribute to processes of care, acknowledgement, justice, adaptability and collective transformation. Public space may not 'heal' trauma itself, but it can help to modify the geographical, social and political conditions that sustain traumatising experiences.
Part 4. Futures after Ruptures
Part 4 looks forward rather than backward, asking what possibilities become feasible through the planning and design of public spaces that identify and address trauma. This part explores prevention, anticipation, imagination and the identification through public space of the core reasons and situations that give rise to the will to understand, accept, or deal with a traumatic experience. Ruptures, break downs, ruins are not understood just in their literal, material forms in buildings and physical landscapes. They may also be disrupted or ruined memories, childhoods, emotions, social relations and collective imaginaries. This part, therefore, considers post-traumatic scenarios not necessarily as transient states on the road to recovery, but as states that might define permanent or long-term futures. We encourage contributions that examine anticipatory design, regenerative public spaces, preventive measures, and future imaginaries emerging through art, culture, play and social experimentation. How might planning and design anticipate traumatic events or conditions, instead than simply reacting after rupture? How can public spaces respond to structural vulnerabilities and how can they assist to the prevention of the repetition of traumatising conditions? How might these processes be enhanced with empathy, communal imagination and a counter-identification of root causes? This part ends with the ethical and policy difficulties inherent in planning public places in trauma-marked situations. What should stay, what should go, what should be changed, what should be left to grow? How can public space recognise unresolved suffering without permanently anchoring populations into traumatised identities? How might design and policy respond to uncertainty and allow for alternative collective futures to be imagined?
References
Boyer, M. C. (1996). The city of collective memory: Its historical imagery and architectural entertainments. MIT Press.
Caruth, C. (Ed.). (1995). Trauma: Explorations in memory. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gertz, N., & Khleifi, G. (2008). Palestinian cinema: Landscape, trauma and memory. Edinburgh University Press.
Gilloch, G., & Kilby, J. (2005). Trauma and memory in the city: From Auster to Austerlitz. In M. Crinson (Ed.), Urban memory: History and amnesia in the modern city (pp. 1–22). Routledge.
Hebbert, M. (2005). The street as locus of collective memory. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23(4), 581–596. https://doi.org/10.1068/d55j
Ward, J., & Pilat, S. (2016). Terror, trauma, memory: Reflections on the Oklahoma City bombing—An introduction. Social Science Quarterly, 97(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12247
INFORMATION ON CONTRIBUTIONS
We welcome contributions that address any of the four parts and suggest how this could reflect on planning, design or governance of public space. Submissions are invited from scholars – established academics to early career researchers – and practitioners in diverse disciplines (urban studies, planning, architecture, landscape architecture, geography, sociology, anthropology, political science, history and memory studies, disaster and climate studies, public health, media and film studies, and environmental humanities). Co-authored work with community organizations, NGOs, public agencies, or design practices is encouraged, including methodological contributions, case-based analyses, and practice-led studies that demonstrate actionable models of care, maintenance, and repair. By integrating conceptual, methodological, and empirical work, the volume bridges scholarship and policy to reorient public-space practice from post-event response to anticipatory, justice-oriented care across the trauma continuum.
When submitting your proposal, please consider the following:
- Indicate which part it is intended for
- 1000 words abstract excluding references (theoretical or conceptual framework, methodology, and anticipated outcome, clear alignment with the book’s theme) in English
- 5-10 references (APA style)
- Maximum three co-authors
- Short bio of 100 words per author (including name, email, affiliation)
- Submit the abstract as a Word Document attached to your email with a clear subject line (example, Abstract – title and author surname) to both addresses
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. andThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
IMPORTANT DATES AND TENTATIVE TIMELINE
- Call for abstracts – 16 July 2026
- Abstract submission – 1 October 2026
- Decision on abstracts – 22 October 2026
- Submitting book proposal to the publisher – 29 October 2026
- Expected book proposal review and receipt of contract with the publisher – January/ February 2027
- Notification to chapter authors about the submission requirements (author guidelines) – January/ February 2027
- Submission of final draft – April 2027
- Review of chapters and comments to authors – May 2027
- Submission of final chapter – June 2027
- Submission to publisher – July 2027
- Expected publication – December 2027/ January 2028
Assessment criteria
- The work has not been submitted for publication before
- Originality, novelty, and clear alignment with the book’s approach and themes
- Methodological strength
- Interdisciplinary and global perspectives
- Contribution to broader academic research on public space
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Rural Planning
We have just held our third webinar on "Rural Housing: Community-led Delivery and Community Energy".
You can view the webinar here: https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/7isAX41yP_F_e4XxXf2qrvx-AJ7jDffUvJF0BnUqDuhpg9cZG5_zAfhYsBOB1rMF.yOTzktP5XHgN4FxU
The event was organised under the auspices of the Rural Housing Innovation Network, a UK-based network focusing on the many critical challenges associated with the delivery of affordable rural housing.
The webinar explored the contribution that community-led housing models can make to rural housing delivery. It examined how these models can leverage local support and resources to deliver affordable homes, while also highlighting the importance of community attachments and participation to successful and harmonious delivery of rural housing, particularly in the context of planning reform and continued emphasis on housing targets.
These issues were discussed following presentations by Tom Moore (University of Liverpool) and Harshavardhan Jatkar (University College London).
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Global South & East
How should planners respond to the rapid spatial reorganisation of industry? An international online workshop hosted by AESOP IIT Delhi and UCL brought together emerging researchers and world-leading experts to explore the future of industrial planning, governance, sustainability and labour.
From 7–9 July 2026, the AESOP’s Young Academics Network, the School of Public Policy at IIT Delhi, and The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL successfully delivered a three-day international online workshop on "International Perspectives on Planning Industrial Spatial Configurations". The event brought together 19 PhD researchers, post-doctoral scholars, and early-career academics from India and across the globe.
International keynote speakers included Professor Tali Hatuka, whose work on urban futures and industrial urbanism has influenced debates on cities and technological change, Professor Tathagata Chatterji, who explored industrial transformation through the lens of informality and sustainable development, and Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones (UCL Bartlett), internationally recognised for his contributions to spatial planning, governance, and digital futures.
A dedicated editors’ roundtable brought together representatives from Planning Theory & Practice, Built Environment, and Town Planning Review, providing participants with insights into publishing, scholarly debate, and academic careers. Representing the UCL–IIT Delhi partnership, Dr Amit Khandelwal and Dr Archana Trivedi joined the reflective final sessions and shared insights on how the relationship has developed, through sustained engagement, academic conversations and a shared commitment to addressing important challenges together.
Across three days, participants presented work-in-progress within four thematic areas: spatial planning and territorial strategy; governance and institutions; environment and equity; and labour geographies. Structured mentoring sessions provided detailed feedback from Professor Gavin Parker, Dr Urmila Jha-Thakur, Professor Meenu Tewari, Professor Utpal Sharma, and Dr John Ward.
The workshop strengthened India–Europe research collaboration, fostered new academic networks, and demonstrated the value of innovative online formats in supporting emerging planning researchers, particularly for international partnerships. The organisers extend their sincere thanks to all keynote speakers, editors, mentors, and participants for making the event such a stimulating and successful exchange of ideas.
Acknowledgements
This initiative emerged from AESOPs Global South & East Thematic Group. AESOPs Young Academics Network. It was enabled by the strategic partnership between IIT Delhi and UCL, and support of Prof Jacqui Glass Dean of the Bartlett (UCL’s faculty of the Built Environment), Prof Monica Lakhanpaul (Global Strategic Academic Advisor, India), University College London, Prof. Ashwini Agrawal (Dean of Research and Development, IIT Delhi).
The co-organisers were Dr Lucy Natarajan from Bartlett School of Planning (BSP, UCL) and Dr Surajit Chakravarty from the School of Public Policy (SoPP, IIT Delhi), who ran the event with enormous support from others in BSP, SoPP, and the Young Academics Network (AESOP YAN). We pay special thanks to Donato Casavola, Adahi Şahin, Adina-Iuliana Deacu, Dr Dimitrios Panayotopoulos-Tsiros, Aaron Davis, and Pratyoosh Madhavi.
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
Youth as Agents of Hope: Urban Living Labs and Community-Engaged Learning
29–30 October 2026 | Larnaka, Cyprus
A two-day conference is combined effort of the Erasmus+ project ‘Education in Living Labs: Participatory Skills for Sustainable Urban Governance’ (PS-U-GO) and the ‘AESOP Thematic Group on Public Spaces and Urban Cultures’ (TG PSUC), hosted by the Society and Urban Form lab (SURF), Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, and supported by Larnaka2030, the European Capital of Culture 2030.
Conference Topics
Involving young people in public space and urban governance brings immediate concerns into long-term urban development agendas. Urban Living Labs (ULLs) offer a promising framework for inclusive urban decision-making, fostering collaboration among multiple stakeholders and young people, and creating situated learning environments that bridge formal higher education with engagement in space of everyday life.
The conference aims to address the following questions:
- How do young people gain a meaningful role in public space and urban governance?
- What role do Urban Living Labs play in bridging formal education with real-world urban contexts?
- How can participatory methodologies support civic responsibility among students and young urban professionals?
- What pedagogic frameworks best support situated, experiential learning through ULLs?
- How can students and young people contribute to urban change by co-creating urban solutions and imagining hopeful urban futures?
- What institutional, spatial, and relational practices make ULLs with young people effective?
Who is Invited to Participate?
Researchers, educators, students (including early-career researchers), practitioners, youth workers, policymakers, and community organizations engaged with:
- Youth participation in urban planning and decision-making
- Urban Living Labs as educational and governance spaces
- Participatory and community-engaged pedagogies
- Situated learning and experiential education in higher education institutions
- Co-creation, commoning, and civic empowerment in urban contexts
Format of Participation
- Oral presentations, visual essays or videos (10–15 minutes).
- Contributions may address theoretical, methodological, educational, or practice-based perspectives related to the conference themes.
The Conference Format
The conference is organized around roundtable discussions, each to one of the conference's core questions, with a moderator and a discussant. Roundtables bring together diverse participants who share their work in short interventions (10–15 minutes), followed by open discussion.
This is accompanied by a mobile workshop to an active Urban Living Lab site in Larnaka, connecting the academic discussions with live urban practice. Participants will also have the opportunity to engage onsite with the work of international artists participating in the Creative Europe project MedSea led by Larnaka2030.
The conference is small-scale, limited to approximately 30 participants, allowing for in-depth exchange and collaborative reflection.
Submissions
Abstract of 250–300 words to:
Please use the template provided here: https://www.surf.com.cy/news-and-events/call-for-participation-ps-u-go-aesop-tg-psuc-international-conference-2026/
Key Dates
- 1 September 2026 Deadline for participation interests and submissions
- 15 September 2026 Participation approvals
- 29–30 October 2026 Conference
- 30 May 2027 Conference publication
Conference publications
- The conference findings, including all presentations and discussions, will be published online following the event. A book of abstracts will also be published prior to the conference. Both publications will have ISBNs.
Fee
- There will be no registration fees for the conference. Participants are responsible for all travel and accommodation costs.
More information: https://www.surf.com.cy/news-and-events/call-for-participation-ps-u-go-aesop-tg-psuc-international-conference-2026/
