THEMATIC GROUPS
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
Event of the AESOP Thematic Group ‘Public SpaceS and Urban Cultures’
10-11 September 2025, Eindhoven, NL
Hosted by Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e)
Prefiguring Hopeful Futures is a two-day, workshop-based symposium that brings together researchers, designers, artists, and practitioners to explore how small-scale, experimental, and everyday prefigurative practices shape just, sustainable, and multispecies futures. Structured around three intersecting strands— futures in the everyday, ecological transitions, and more-than-human design—the event invites critical, creative, and speculative engagements with urban action as a site of transformation.
We invite interested participants to submit an expression of interest by no later than 15 July 2025, by email to
Overview
Prefiguring Hopeful Futures is a two-day workshop-based symposium that brings together scholars, designers, artists, and community practitioners engaged in hopeful, situated, and more-than-human urban practices. Hosted by Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and building on the legacy of the JPI-ENUTC project ‘CoNECT’ (www.jpiconect.eu), the event will explore how (small-scale, experimental, or everyday) prefigurative actions in urban environments contribute to the shaping of just, sustainable, and multispecies futures. Rather than treating topics like climate transition, community care, or ecological design as separate silos, this event reads them as overlapping zones of transformation. With an emphasis on practice as theory and engagement as speculation, the symposium offers space for grounded exchange, mutual learning, and co-creation. Through dialogues, site visits, and workshops, we will trace fragments of alternative futures already contained in the urban present.
The symposium is organized around three intersecting strands, understood as shared lenses and as part of a larger conversation about reimagining urban life:
- Futures in the everyday: How do seemingly ordinary practices and spaces (maintenance, rituals, routines) carry the seeds of larger transformation? This strand looks at how hope is cultivated through grounded, lived experience.
- Ecological transitions as collective practices: Moving beyond abstract sustainability goals, this strand focuses on urban responses to climate and ecological crises that are participatory, embedded in local cultures, and attentive to interdependence across species and systems.
- Designing more-than-human urban futures: Exploring how design practices, from speculative tools to spatial experiments, can shape inclusive, post-human urban imaginaries. Emphasis is placed on multispecies cohabitation, rewilding, and situated care ecologies.
Theme
Amid social, ecological, and political crises, it is urgent to imagine and enact urban futures grounded in justice, care, and interdependence. While dominant systems often appear insurmountable, alternative spaces of reimagination persist: in community gardens, local commons, neighbourhood assemblies, experimental housing, and everyday acts of maintenance. These practices are often provisional and situated, offering glimpses of different worlds through small but meaningful gestures. As per Ernst Bloch’s understanding of “concrete utopias” (1988 [1957]), hope is not a passive condition, but an active engagement with possibility, forged in specific socio-material contexts.
This symposium is animated by the lens of prefiguration, a way of understanding political and spatial practices as experiments in living otherwise (Franks, 2018; Maeckelbergh, 2016). Through this lens, even small actions can be read as expressions of hope: hopeful not because they promise closure or totalizing solutions, but because they embody situated, relational responses to the challenges of the present and alternatives to business-as-usual. Prefigurative hope is not an abstract ideal but something practiced, an ongoing process grounded in everyday life, local ecologies, and collective imagination.
Furthermore, urban futures are increasingly understood as deeply entangled with non-human agency, ecological interdependencies, and the material politics of urban nature (Latour, 2005; Haraway, 2003; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017). From green infrastructure and multispecies habitats to post-human design approaches and neighbourhood rewilding, prefigurative practices today often reflect a growing recognition of nature not as aesthetic background, but as part of the urban community. As alternatives to the ways of thinking and acting that produced our current crises, we understand ecological transition, collective care, and post-human imaginaries as overlapping in practice and thought, forming intersecting strands of a broader urban transformation: woven together in urban commons and everyday actions that test and shape more liveable, multispecies futures.
This symposium seeks to gather a wide range of perspectives – empirical, theoretical, and artistic – that explore what kinds of hopeful worlds are imagined, tested, or enacted through situated urban and ecological practices; how these practices express enduring hope for the future in the present; in what ways ecological transition, collective care, and more-than-human relations are braided together in urban life; and how such actions might inspire others through example, reproduction, or resonance.
We are especially interested in grounded practices and experimental formats that help us trace the overlapping strands of hopeful urban futures, including but not limited to:
- Cultures of care and mutual aid
- Climate-resilient and biodiverse urban practices
- Sufficiency and the good life beyond consumerism
- Situated, more-than-human design approaches
- Plural forms of dwelling and co-governance
- Participatory futuring and inclusive collective practices
We invite contributions from across planning, geography, urban sociology, architecture, and design. In keeping with the theme of prefiguring alternatives, we are open to formats and approaches that reimagine the role of research and academia. Our aim is to co-create a space that foregrounds urban transformation as both imaginative and practical, where nature, community, and design are understood as interdependent elements of a hopeful, post-anthropocentric urban future.
References
Bloch, E. (1988 [1957]). The Principle of Hope, Volume 1. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
Franks, B. (2018). Prefiguration. In C. Levy (ed.), Anarchism (pp. 28–43). Routledge.
Graeber, D. (2013). It is value that brings universes into being. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(2), 219–243.
Haraway, D. (2003). The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Maeckelbergh, M. (2016). The prefigurative turn: The time and place of social movement practice. In Dinerstein, A.C. (ed.), Social Sciences for An Other Politics: Women Theorizing Without Parachutes (pp. 121–134). Palgrave.
Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Format and practical information
10–11 September 2025, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
This is a participatory and hands-on symposium, designed to foster exchange and shared exploration rather than formal paper delivery. We envisage a mix of workshops, short presentations, site-based activities, and group dialogue, and welcome a wide range of formats and disciplinary perspectives. This may include:
- (Short) academic papers
- Creative or artistic works
- Posters or visual storytelling
- Design tools or speculative methods
- Community or site-based practices
- Participatory workshops or experiments
Contributions should align with the event’s themes and values, particularly its emphasis on contextual, inclusive, and more-than-human perspectives. In keeping with the theme of prefiguring alternatives, we are open to formats and approaches that reimagine the role of research and academia.
There is no registration fee, but participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation. Lunch will be provided, as will a shared symposium dinner on Wednesday 10 September. Recommended accommodation options and travel information will be shared with accepted participants.
Submission process
We invite interested participants to submit an expression of interest by no later than 15 July 2025, by email to
- A short abstract or proposal (up to 300 words) describing the focus and content of your contribution;
- The preferred format of your contribution: presentation, workshop, creative work, or site-based activity;
- A short bio (max 100 words), including your background and affiliation.
A pre-event webinar and feedback session will be offered in early August to connect contributors and support preparation.
Organizers
Dr. Oana Druta (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Louwrens Botha (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Giulia Gualtieri (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Representatives of AESOP Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures: Mohamed Saleh (University of Groningen, the Netherlands), Tihomir Viderman (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany)
More information on AESOP Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures series on Hope can be found here: https://aesop-planning.eu/tg-news/public-spaces-and-urban-cultures/call-for-expressions-of-interest-to-host-the-thematic-groups-meeting-2024-2026-public-spaces-urban-cultures-and-hope
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: New Technologies & Planning
AAA We will have a
New Technologies and Planning Thematic Group Meeting at the AESOP Congress 2025 in Istanbul
The meeting will be held on Wednesday 9 July at 12:45 - 14:00.
Room A0-07 in building A (Economics Faculty)
Save the date and time!
You are cordially invited to join!
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Planning/Conflict
Contested Istanbul: Urban development and planning conflicts in Turkey’s ‘aspiring global city’
(special session organized in association with the AESOP TG Planning/Conflict)
AESOP Annual Congress 2025 Istanbul, July 7th – July 11th 2025
Organizers: Enrico Gualini and Esin Özdemir
Contributions by Deniz Ay, Yildiz Erdoğan, Melis Oğuz Çevik, Adile Avar and Burcu Değerli Çiftçi
Turkish metropoles have experienced in the last decades the impact of state-led boosterist urban policies. Istanbul is at the forefront of this process, as the largest and most dynamic metropolis of the country in both economic and social and terms.
Istanbul has taken central place as an ‘aspiring global city’ (Ay and Özkul 2016) in national state urban policies. This has developed into a peculiar Istanbul way to authoritarian neoliberalism, based on massive investment in support of speculative private entrepreneurialism, and on corporate-style marketing and management framed within state-led governance arrangements.
At the heart of these urban policies are multiscalar interventions – some already implemented, some still on the national government agenda – ranging from infrastructural mega-projects to urban renewal projects at neighbourhood level. These interventions, particularly for large-scale infrastructure investments projects, are often implemented in public-private partnership arrangements lacking accountability and citizen involvement.
Framed by the national government’s globalist ambitions as well as emergency arguments – like earthquake disaster prevention – and by legally supported by ad-hoc legal frameworks, these measures have strongly impacted on the historical urban fabric and on the livelihood and identity of local communities. As a consequence, a broad range of issues of contention and conflict have emerged, concerning among others:
- the centralized-authoritarian decision-making logic, restraining civil society and local communities as well as local governments from democratic involvement;
- the negative impact on local communities such as displacement and dispossession;
- the depletion of natural resources for sustainable urban development, such as water basins and forests;
- the commodification and erosion of public spaces;
- the destruction of the historical urban fabric and identity;
- social inclusion, poverty and the integration of human and more-than-human diversity in the city.
Against this background, Istanbul has experienced a long season of state-authoritarian repression of urban insurgencies – with the case of Gezi Park as a hallmark. Over time, Istanbul has also marked a nation-wide unique if troubled attempt to introduce an original neo-municipalist path to urban reform, possibly introducing opportunities for a different approach to the contradictions and conflicts generated by its recent urban development path.
In this session – organized in association with the AESOP TG Planning/Conflict – we ask engaged scholars and activists to reflect on the contentious nature of urban politics and planning in Istanbul. The aim is not only to give a critical overview of current issues and their long-term causes, but also to reflect on the aftermath and heritage of democratic protest, civic insurgency and planner-activist engagement in a forward-looking perspective of generating possible alternatives.
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Planning/Conflict
By designing alternative futures and visions of a better life for all, utopias reveal the potential for the necessary socio-ecological transformation for a post-capitalist society. The concept of concrete utopias supplements the level of pure imagination of the possible with its concrete testing in the here and now. Based on this assumption, the lecture series undertakes an exploration of these here and now practices of possible futures for social transformation. The aim is to create a comprehensive perspective of alternative urban production, which is made possible by utopian thinking and prefigurative practice. Hereby, we also want to take a closer look at various empirical examples and discuss approaches for a possible research agenda.
The lecture series is organised by the Chair of Planning Theory and Analysis of Urban and Regional Policies of the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning (TU Berlin) and addresses scholars, students, and the interested public.
PROGRAMME
28/05/25
Utopian Citizenship: from South African neighbourhoods to a Mediterranean border
Laura Silva (Paris School of Economics)
04/06/25
Thinking from the kitchen: towards radically caring urban futures through collective cooking
Susanne Hübl (Universität Münster)
11/06/25
Compass for a solidary neighborhood – real utopias for the city of tomorrow
Maximilian Hellriegel (SoWo Leipzig) and
Sara Schmitt Pacifico (Stadt Frankfurt am Main)
18/06/25
Prefigurative politics and the capitalist city
Laura Monticelli (independent researcher)
25/06/25
Prefigurative planning: enacting utopias in the here and now
Simin Davoudi (Newcastle University)
28 May - 25 June 2025,
Wednesdays 5 - 6 pm (CET)
ZOOM:
https://tu-berlin.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/_9ObhoSbQau069BmGvAAeg
Information & Contact:
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Planning/Conflict
What is the potential for urban policy conflicts to bring about change? In its fourth international conference, the AESOP Planning/Conflict TG pursues further its inquiry into the meaning and role of contention and conflict in democratic urban politics and planning. The conference focuses on emergent issues of contention and conflict in urban transformation, as well as the generative potential for change that may arise from alternative practices of contestation and mobilization.
This perspective invites exploring contention and conflict as possible drivers and opportunity structures for generating alternative futures. While this requires adopting a non-deterministic ontology of emergence, it also requires pushing our understanding of conflict beyond received schemes. Against reducing the radicality of contention and conflict to a matter of negotiated debate and manageable resolution – of ‘taming antagonism’ – as well as against reducing attention to reactive moments of protest and resistance. The conference invites papers that explore how conflict dynamics may be constitutive of capacities that bring about alternatives, papers that critically reflect on the conditions that hamper or enhance such change, and papers that analyze related practices that reinforce capacities to engage conflict and contention.
While radical democratic theory and critique of the ‘post-political city’ emphasize the need to recover the political as agonistic affirmation of difference, articulations of the debate also point to the variety of social sites and practices wherein this affirmation is possible.
Here, the idea of concrete utopia as a form of prefigurative action comes into play. As actualizations of possibilities not-yet-there intimately related to conditions and perceptions of the here-and-now, concrete utopias embody, at the same time, a critique of the present, an affirmation of its contingency, and a concretization of alternative aspirations and intentions. Their prefigurative nature resides in realizing a convergence of motivations and resources for local collective action that merges envisioning and enacting, i.e., the capacity of pre-figuration and of pre-formation, of imaging as well as making.
As an expression of insurgent practices, concrete utopias represent political moments in that they establish a link between the critical delegitimization of the present and the praxeological legitimation of alternatives. Just as conflict is a political moment marked by affirmation of the existence of an absence, of a gap, concrete utopias are political moments turning this affirmation into a capacity of envisioning and enacting alternatives.
The conference invites to adopt the idea of concrete utopia as a heuristic, exploratory hypothesis for critical research on urban policy conflicts. By discussing how prefigurative actions and concrete utopias are being experimented with in contemporary cities, the conference aims to contribute to exploring how the contestation of urban policies may produce seeds for political transformation.
Contributions are welcome that address contexts, conditions, and challenges for introducing change in a variety of urban domains of contestation – including, but not limited to work, care, housing, social autonomy and commoning, sustainability transitions, solidarity, and citizenship – both empirically and theoretically.
Call for papers:
Contributions are welcome that address contexts, conditions, and challenges for introducing change in a variety of urban domains of contestation – including, but not limited to work, care, housing, social autonomy and commoning, sustainability transitions, solidarity, and citizenship –both empirically and theoretically.
Submission of paper proposals:
Please submit your paper proposal including
- an abstract of 300-500 words, outlining its relation to the conference theme, conceptual framework and methodology
- three to five keywords
- a short bio-note of up to 100 words, including current affiliation, position and address
before 30 June 2025 to:
Upon completion of selection and registration, papers will be organized in thematic sessions and scheduled to form the final program.
Plans for special issues of international peer-reviewed journals will be discussed during the conference.
Key dates:
- abstract submission: 30 June 2025
- decision on paper proposals: 15 July 2025
- registration deadline: 15 August 2025
- final program: 1 September 2025
Preliminary program (t.b.c.):
- two keynote speeches:
Miguel A. Martinez, Uppsala Universitet and Nanke Verloo, Universiteit van Amsterdam
- thematic paper sessions
- field-trips to related sites in Berlin
The final program will be published before 1 September 2025.
Conference fee:
100 Euros / 50 Euros (students) to cover meals and refreshments, due to current budget cuts. Payment is requested together with registration before 15 August 2025. Receipt of payment is provided.
Concept and organization:
Chair of Planning Theory and Urban-Regional Policy Analysis, Technische Universität Berlin
Scientific committee:
Francesco Campagnari, EHESS Paris
Enrico Gualini, Technische Universität Berlin
Verena Lenna, Vrije Universiteit Brussels
Alessandra Manganelli, Universitat de Barcelona
Miguel A. Martinez, Uppsala Universitet
Stijn Oosterlynk, Universiteit Antwerpen
Carolina Pacchi, Politecnico di Milano
Nanke Verloo, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Venue:
Technische Universität Berlin, Building A
Straße des 17. Juni 153, 10623 Berlin
Contacts:
Conference link:
http://www.planningtheory.tu-berlin.de
AESOP Planning/Conflict thematic group link:
https://aesop-planning.eu/thematic-groups/planning-conflict
Open the call here:
