Abstracts Submission
The following issues are currently accepting abstract submissions:
Temporary Use and Value Creation in Urban Contexts
Academic Editors: Hilde Remøy (TU Delft) and Chiara Mazzarella (TU Delft)
- Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 June 2025
- Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 October 2025
- Publication of the Issue: April/June 2026
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.
Artificial Intelligence and the Sustainability of African Cities
Academic Editors: Catarina Fontes (Technical University of Munich), Mennatullah Hendawy (Technical University of Munich), and Sónia Semedo (University of Cabo Verde)
- Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 June 2025
- Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 October 2025
- Publication of the Issue: April/June 2026
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly shaping the trajectories of cities worldwide. In Africa, rapid urbanization presents both challenges and opportunities for the adoption of AI to address current issues and needs. AI has the potential to make African cities more sustainable and to support urban development with applications spanning across all types of urban infrastructure and public services delivery. This includes, for instance, transportation, water supply and distribution, sanitation and waste management, energy and telecommunications, security and housing, healthcare, food systems, education, cultural activities, and community engagement. However, the global adoption of AI is also impacting African cities by creating significant pressure on local economies, political systems, and natural and cultural landscapes, namely through the increasing demand for resources and data. Therefore, cities are facing critical challenges when it comes to balancing the dual goals of leveraging AI for sustainability and ensuring that AI systems themselves are sustainable, equitable, and culturally appropriate.
We welcome submissions that adopt interdisciplinary approaches and refer to at least one of the following subtopics:
- AI supporting a sustainable path for African cities
How is AI enabling new opportunities for sustainable transportation and improved infrastructures, equitable healthcare, food security, accessibility to services, and empowerment of communities and vulnerable groups?
How can AI systems be designed, implemented, and governed in ways that are ethically sound, energy-efficient, and aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals?
- The environmental and social challenges of AI for African cities
How is the global adoption of AI impacting African territories and communities?
How is AI forcing changes in policy and local economies?
How is AI governance and regulation impacting innovation and widespread adoption of AI by local governments in African cities?
What are the challenges and opportunities in making AI more sustainable from an economic, technical, and social perspective?
- Responsible AI and urban resilience
What systems of values and principles are guiding AI alignment?
How can AI contribute to building resilient cities that are capable of adapting to environmental, economic, and social changes?
How can AI be used to address the specific challenges of informal settlements such as infrastructure gaps, lack of resources, and social inequalities?
Urban Future-Making in Times of Polycrisis and Disruption: Agency and Specificities
Academic Editors: Oksana Zaporozhets (Humboldt University of Berlin), Annegret Haase (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH – UFZ), and Fenna Imara Hoefsloot (University College London)
- Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 June 2025
- Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 October 2025
- Publication of the Issue: April/June 2026
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