Abstracts Submission

Time has become as valuable as space in contemporary cities. The temporary availability of vacant properties has become a precious urban resource, allowing a variety of potential uses. Real estate being a fundamental urban resource, the reuse of vacant real estate is not only a circular practise, but also an open field for experimentation. In fact, several examples of temporary use projects show experiments in vacant space, combining different economic models for the (co-)governance of the space, and generating multiple impacts on the community, real estate, and neighbourhood.

In the gaps between different real estate use cycles, unused spaces constitute an opportunity for urban actors to give room to ideas for various uses based on public/private needs or subjective visions. Research has provided evidence that short-term projects allow to make tests, reactivate unattractive areas, and experiment with adaptations both in buildings and in public space. Short-term uses experiment with innovative approaches, diverse forms of dwelling, creative management, and collaborative initiatives. In this way, diverse forms of placemaking provide a wide range of benefits, but also face drawbacks and risks for the actors involved.

Temporary uses are increasingly included in real estate management and in planning. However, we still lack in-depth research on assessment methods to understand, measure, and evaluate the multiple impacts and values that they generate at different levels and scales.

Thus, this thematic issue seeks to address the following questions:

    How does temporality influence real estate, urban development, and local communities? What values emerge from temporary use practises?
    Why do diverse urban actors engage in temporary re-uses, and who benefits from them?
    What methods can assess temporary use values for real estate management and urban studies?

Starting from these questions, we invite researchers to submit theoretical or case-study-based contributions using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed approaches. We encourage the submission of articles that push the boundaries of how we understand, assess, and manage temporary re-uses and value creation at different scales. The aim is to collect critical perspectives to provide further knowledge for scholars and decision-makers in fields of real estate management, urban planning, and multi-actors’ collaboration, ensuring equity in urban development.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Urban Planning is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Urban Planning is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

When pandemics, military conflicts, democratic backsliding, and the climate crisis compromise social, political, and material life, individual and collective futures become acute and need reconsideration. While some of these threats are not new, their intersection creates unprecedented challenges for cities and their inhabitants. This ubiquity of disruptions, referred to as polycrisis, has not only worldly effects but also challenges epistemic and ontological assumptions (Hilbrandt & Ren, 2025).

Given this context, urban future-making requires a realignment of knowledge production, including the role of scholars, methodologies, and vocabularies used to grasp urban futures. Proposing a thematic issue on urban future(s)-making, we assume that the future is neither linear nor single (Adam & Groves, 2007; Datta, 2019; Urry, 2016). Its various trajectories are produced in different "presents'' and rooted in different "pasts." The ubiquitous disruptions raise the question: Are urban futures inevitably fragmented due to uncertainty and inability to achieve consensus, or are common and collective futures still possible?

The thematic issue focuses on the agency and specificity of future-making in times of disruption. Contributions will illuminate which agents are involved/excluded from developing and implementing urban futures across various cities and political systems, what struggles unfold over urban futures, and on what scale these struggles take place. By emphasizing the agency of individuals, families, and communities as future-makers (Kemmer & Simone, 2021; Zhelnina, 2023), the thematic issue questions the dominance of the states, corporations, and urban experts in determining urban futures. Additionally, by centering the temporalities of disruption, we unpack the implications of the polycrisis for classical theories of urban future-making that assume continuity, peace, and progress rather than disruption or regression.

Hence, through a diverse set of contributions, this thematic issue seeks to explicate the complexities and controversies of urban future-making. We encourage scholars with a risk background (including but not limited to experiences of forced migration, war, natural disasters, or political crises) to share their perspectives.

References:

Adam, B., & Groves, C. (2007). Future matters: Action, knowledge, ethics. Brill.

Datta, A. (2019). Postcolonial urban futures: Imagining and governing India’s smart urban age. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37(3), 393–410. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818800721

Hilbrandt, H., & Ren, J. (2025). Doing urban geography in times of crisis: Introduction to the forum “Urban geography in times of crisis.” Geographica Helvetica, 80(1), 23–29. https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-23-2025

Kemmer, L., & Simone, A. (2021). Standing by the promise: Acts of anticipation in Rio and Jakarta. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39(4), 573–589. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775820982997

Urry, J. (2016). What is the future? John Wiley & Sons.

Zhelnina, A. (2023). Making urban futures at your kitchen table: Temporalities of an urban renewal controversy in Moscow. City & Community, 22(2), 145–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/15356841221135171

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Urban Planning is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.